Chai Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Name: Chai Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Prep time: 120 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 160 min
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cup milk; 1 Tbsp Chai tea leaves (2 tea bags); 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tsps baking powder; 3/4 tsp salt; 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon; 1 tsp ground cardamom; 1/2 tsp ground allspice; 1/4 tsp ground cloves; 1 tsp ground ginger; 3/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature); 1 cup granulated sugar; 1/2 cups light brown sugar (packed); 3 large eggs ( room temperature); 1 tsp vanilla; 1 cup Chai tea milk; 8 oz cream cheese (full fat, room temperature); 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter (room temperature); 4 cups powdered sugar; 1 tsp vanilla; cape gooseberries; whole allspice; whole star anise; whole cloves; whole green cardamom pods

By Olivia, 138 Comments

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This Chai Cake is a special treat for chai tea lovers. Packed with fragrant spices and paired with a simple cream cheese frosting.

Any chai tea lovers out there?? I’m actually not one of them (gasp!), but I do love a good spice cake, and that’s exactly what this is. But before we get into the details all of the deliciousness that is this Chai Cake, let me tell you about the adventure I had trying to decide how to decorate it. Ugh.

I was kind of at a loss for ideas. I was very uninspired, so I started looking at Fall food decorating ideas on Pinterest. Somewhere along the way, in the masses of pumpkins, and pears, and pecans, I stumbled across gooseberries. Now, there are no gooseberries IN the actual cake. They are purely decoration, and I think they do a pretty good job of that. But my quest to find them was not so easy.

I also decided that I wanted some white currants to go with the gooseberries on top of the cake. I had seen some at my local farmers market a few weeks ago, and crossed my fingers they were still there. They were not. Nor were the gooseberries. It wasn’t until my 5th stop (!!) that I actually found gooseberries. And it was in a store I never go into and hadn’t planned on going to, but there they were. Success! Partial, anyhow.

It was around store #7 that I gave up on finding the white currants. My backup plan, which I didn’t have until I gave up on the currants, was to pair the gooseberries with whole spices. None of which I had at home, of course. I hit up store #8 for the whole cardamom pods (since I knew they had them — I should have bought them the week before when I got the ground cardamom there) and loose leaf chai tea. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any other whole spices, so I had to go back to stores #2 and #5 to get them, UGH.

THREE hours later, I was finally home. I didn’t get everything I wanted, but it was good enough. I was most happy with finding whole star anise. It’s not actually in the cake either (lol), but it’s so pretty!! Omg is it aromatic though. Not a pleasant smell unless you like liquorice (which I don’t).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with chai tea, it’s a very aromatic and spicy tea originating from India. The ingredients vary slightly depending on where you get it (or how you make it), but it typically consists of a black tea with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, black pepper, and the key ingredient, cardamom.

It’s cardamom that gives chai tea its unique flavour, and I think it’s a love/hate thing, like cilantro. It’s very strong, so you want to be careful not to use too much of it.

Since this is a spice cake, I chose to pair it with a cream cheese frosting, but you could use a vanilla frosting if you prefer. The flavour of this cake is delicious, and the texture is perfect. But if you don’t like chai, you probably won’t like the flavour of this cake, though I’m not a chai lover, and it still tastes delicious to me. You can always adjust the amount of cardamom in it too, or just leave it out altogether for a regular spice cake.

Tips for this Chai Cake:

You can use regular milk if you’d prefer not to make the chai milk.
Whole spices shown as garnish in the photos are star anise, cloves, allspice, and cardamom.
If you don’t like chai, you can leave out the cardamom for a plain spice cake.
If you like this chai cake, be sure to check out my Earl Grey Cake, Spice Cake, and Pumpkin Spice Latte Cake.
To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, see my Flat Top Cakes post.

Print Rate

4.92 from 24 votes