Earl Grey Tea Cake with Lemon Buttercream by Rachel

Another week, another cake!

I went down to DC to visit family this weekend and we were invited to a birthday party.  Not wanting to go empty handed, I decided to give the gift of food, so I baked a cake.

I wanted to make a cake with a unique and delicate flavor and I didn't want to just make vanilla cake (though nothing is wrong with a good, vanilla cake).  I remembered having earl grey ice cream for the first time this summer for the Van Leewen Ice Cream Truck and I loved the flavor.  It was gentle, but not flowery.  So I settled on flavoring my cake with the tea.

Ingredients for the cake
5 teabags of early grey tea
3/4 cup whole milk
2 tbsp sugar

1 stick of butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp lemon juice, fresh squeezed
1 tbsp lemon zest (about half a lemon)

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt

Faux Cream Cheese Frosting and Salted Caramel by Rachel

If you've embarked on making the Spiced Apple Cake and want to fancy it up, you can definitely frost it with your standard buttercream frosting.  I frosted mine with a slightly healthier faux cream cheese frosting and homemade salted caramel.

From this boring cake...

To this yummy creation!

The faux cream cheese frosting is a little lighter and fluffier than your average frosting because I didn't want to weigh down the spiced apple cake since it's a denser type of cake.  It's "faux" because it doesn't actually use any cream cheese.  It uses Greek yogurt and tastes so good with this cake.