Giant Bubble Tea/Boba Cake

SO excited to share our first cake of the year with you today!!! You all expressed your love for our baking projects, so we’re going to be coming into 2018 with even more dessert projects. We’ll be stepping back a bit from doing as many DIYs, and focusing more on expanding our recipes, since those are my favorite things to create anyways! Some of you might know already that I’m a huge boba fan, and a lot of you are too, so we’re making a black tea flavored cake shaped like a giant cup of bubble tea! How many of you have never tried bubble tea? I’m always surprised to learn how many people have never had it; Kyle only had it for the first time a few months ago after I introduced it to him. You guys have to try it though, it’s addicting!

For the cake:

1 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk, heated
2 black tea bags
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
Two 6″ cake pans

*Note: this recipe makes 2 layers of cake. To get 4-5 layers of cake, make the recipe twice.

For the decoration:

Your favorite buttercream
Pink food coloring
Black gumballs
White fondant
Piping bag
Serrated knife

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease your cake pans and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.

2. Steep the two tea bags in the heated milk. Once it has been steeped, remove the tea bags and add the vanilla extract to the milk.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and mix until combined. Slowly add in the dry ingredients and milk, mixing as you pour.

4. Fill up two cake pans 2/3 of the way full. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the top becomes golden. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely before removing from the pans. Repeat these steps until you have 5 layers of cake total.

5. Once all of the cake layers have cooled completely, cut the cakes into circles of varying sizes, so that when you stack them they form a cone shape. The diameters of each of our circles were 4.95″, 5.2″, 5.45″, 5.75″, and 6″. Stack the cakes one on top of another with a layer of buttercream in between each one.

6. Frost the outside of the cake in pink buttercream and push black gumballs into the bottom of the cake for the “tapioca balls.” Roll out your white fondant to 1/4″ thick and cut out a 1/2″ strip and a 6″ circle to place on the top of the bubble tea cup for a lid.

7. Use a large bubble tea straw or make a straw out of fondant and poke it into the top of the cake. Cut the cake into slices and serve to your family or friends!

Now I’m seriously craving bubble tea! The pains of making cakes that look like other food are that you’ll be craving the food by the time the cake is done. Ha! In other news, we’re working on gathering up all our cake recipes and displaying them in one place, and you all are the best at coming up with clever hashtags, so if you think of a good one for our cakes, send it our way!!! AND if you have and suggestions for our future crazy cakes, leave them below in the comments! 😉