Constant Comment Layer Cake - November 21, 2015
Rachel, a recent and dear friend posted on twitter: “Somebody bake me a birthday cake that smells like Constant Comment tea. K, thanks.”
First some backstory. In 2014, soon after I started a job at a new company I overheard a discussion about cookies and for whatever reason that ended up with me beginning to bake things and bring them in on Mondays. This led from stuffed cookies, to cupcakes, to pastries, to breads, to various candies. I became a pretty good baker, but I only did pies once, and never did do a cake. I liked being able to have lots of servings so lots of people would get a chance to experience the wares, cupcakes work for that, cakes, not all the time.
When Rachel posted that and I saw it, I knew I wanted to bake that cake. When I was baking last year, I would collect and email myself recipes. One of them was a cake that used tea infused milk as one of the ingredients.
After baking so much last year, I also became notorious for changing the ingredients and techniques. The book I learned a lot about technique from during my baking odyssey was Cristina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar. If you’ve watched the first season of PBS’ “Mind of a Chef” you likely saw Cristina convert a sheet cake into a 3-layer round cake. I’d never attempted it, but I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
I ended up doubling the recipe. The recipe calls for heating up the milk to near boiling, tossing in the contents of some tea bags, letting it steep until cool, then using that mix as an ingredient. Yeah. I didn’t do that. I wanted a lot of the Constant Comment flavor, like a lot.
So, I borrowed a technique that people that bake with marijuana use. I added the milk and tea to a mason jar, and put into a “sous vide” water bath for a few hours. I did the same with the butter that was going to go into the butter cream.
Milk & tea, and butter & tea coming up to 85C temperature to infuse flavors into the media. I did extra milk to act as the wash as described in the Milk Bar methodology.
After a long infusion, and cooling the milk down, I made the cake batter, and baked it on a ½ sheet. This made my house smell amazing.
Milk Bar uses a ¼ sheet and 6-inch cake rings, I used a ½ sheet and 9-inch rings. 9-inch rings and a ½ sheet don’t really yield 2 full circles as expected, so I had to get creative.
So, the full circle was the top layer, the halves were the middle layer, and the rest ended up being the bottom layer.
Not being content to have just the cake and having it frosted, I borrowed from the Milk & Honey at Saint Dinette, and made some Burnt Honey Tuile (the results were more cookie like, but I think it worked.) I crushed some up and put them in between the layers, and on the top of the finished cake.
Final result. If I were to do it again, I’d probably do more frosting, I think the ratio got a little out of whack by having a third layer, but I think it was well received regardless.
It went over well I think. (This was eaten too)
Buoyed by the success and having brunch with some friends and dinner with some others, I baked cupcake versions the next morning to bring to both events. A couple of the pictures by friends ended up on Instagram here, here, and here.
