It’s been a few months since I got engaged to my fiancé, and it almost feels like time has been flying by ever since. I have been looking into wedding planning, wedding dresses, endless amounts of vendors, guest lists, invites, you name it. I feel like I’ve gotten a good chunk of planning done, and with less than a year to go, the only thing really stressing me out is the wedding cake. I’ve decided to make my own wedding cake, and I feel like I’ve been putting so much pressure on myself, so I’ve decided to start simple. I’m starting with some cake flavour testing, to be able to decide on what flavour the wedding cake should be.
The first weird wacky and delicious flavour I came up with was milk tea. In this video I really just took the time to figure out how to infuse the flavour of black tea into the cupcake. I think the cupcake could use some more work, maybe by infusing the butter as well as the milk with tea, but that’s another experiment for another day. The buttercream came out deliciously, but I think another way to make it stronger in taste would be to create a concentrated black tea syrup to add into the buttercream after, but that could risk making the buttercream go out of emulsion if too much liquid is added, or it could make it too sweet because of the extra added sugar. In the end I just infused the milk that went into the cupcake, and the sugar syrup that went into the buttercream, and the flavour was mild but still there.
I rated this a 3.5 but we’re still working on it. Feel free to watch the video below!
Milk Tea Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the cupcakes
220g (1-3/4 cup)flour
250g (1-1/4 cup) sugar
8g (2 tsp) baking powder
2g (1/2 tsp) salt
160g (2/3 cup) milk steeped with 2-3 bags of black tea
144g (2/3 cup) oil, I used canola
2 eggs
For the tea syrup
50g (1/4 cup) sugar
63g (1/4 cup) tea (125g or 1/2 cup water steeped with 2 tea bags, keep the remainder of the tea for the buttercream)
For the black tea Italian meringue buttercream
163g (3/4 cup) sugar
63g (1/4 cup) tea
3 egg whites
227g (1 cup) butter, soft
Method for the cake
- Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Line your cupcake tins with cupcake liners and set aside.
- In a small saucepan, heat your milk until almost boiling, add your tea bags, and let steep for about 10 min. Once it’s steeped, measure it out and top it back up to 160g with regular milk.
- In a large bowl, sift and whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt.
- In a separate small bowl, add your oil, steeped milk, and eggs
- Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.
- Using a large ice cream scoop, scoop the batter into the cupcake liners, and bake for 20 min or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Method for the syrup
- In a small saucepan, bring the sugar and tea to a boil. Take off heat, and let it cool to room temperature. Brush onto the cupcakes.
Method for the buttercream
- In a small saucepan, add the sugar and tea. In the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, add in the egg whites. Have your butter on stand by, cut into small cubes.
- Bring the sugar to a boil while checking the temperature with a sugar thermometer. Once the sugar reaches 105-110C, turn the stand mixer on medium speed. When the sugar reaches 117C, take off heat, turn the stand mixer on low speed, and carefully pour the sugar into the stand mixer.
- After the sugar is added, turn the mixer back up to medium-high speed, and whip until the meringue is stiff and at room temperature. Gradually add in the butter, and whip until the butter is fully incorporated. For an in-depth tutorial on buttercream click here.
- Pipe onto the cupcakes and enjoy!
ally bakes 
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