Anniversary Cake

The Sexy Artist and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on September 12th(it has been a crazy amazing wonderful year and I love him everyday just as much if not more than the day I married him!) and while I would like to report back that it was romantic including cheesy scenes of us feeding each other dried bits of cake lovingly preserved in layers of plastic wrap and foil from our wedding, this was not the case.  The week before our wedding anniversary I unexpectedly had to have my gallbladder removed.  Not only that, somehow I threw away the cake we had saved! I didn't do it on purpose, even though many of you will remember me griping that we should just eat the cake then rather than let it stale for a year.  I think I thought it was one of these weird cuts of pork the SA bought one time when he ventured to the store by himself. (which have subsequently lived in our freezer for the past two years) Needless to say I felt horrible.  Not only were our get-away plans ruined, I had thrown away our cake! There was only one thing left to do.  Recreate the wedding cake. 
Quickly I ruled out two of our flavors, gingerbread with caramelized apples (neither of us are huge fans except in small pieces) and chocolate turtle (while it was delicious its just too rich) So I decided to make a variation of the chai spice cake with white chocolate frosting.
It was a gorgeous cake, delicious frosting and a great way of celebrating our first anniversary.

Chai Cake with Honey Ginger Cream
slightly modified from From Sky High:Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne
1 and 1/3 cups of milk
6 chai tea bags
4 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 and 3/4 cups of cake flour
2 cups of sugar
4 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
3/4 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon of salt
8 ounces of unsalted butter at room temp.
Preheat the oven to 350 Degrees F. Grease the bottom and sides of the pans and line with parchment paper. Grease the paper as well.
In a small saucepan bring the milk to a simmer over low med-low heat. Add the tea bags, careful not to let the paper tag fall into the milk. Remove from heat and allow the tea to steep for 5 minutes. Remove the teabags and squeeze out the milk. Let the chai milk cool completely.
In a medium bowl mix the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, and 1/3 cup of the chai milk. Whisk together.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt in the bowl of a mixer. Beat on low for 30 seconds. Add the butter and the remaining chai milk, on med-low speed.
Raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy. Add the egg mixture in three additions scraping the between additions. Divide the batter evenly among the pans.
Bake the cakes for 26-28 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for 10 minutes.Remove cakes from pans and peel off parchment paper. Cool completely.
Ginger Cream
2 and 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar
6 ounces of cream cheese at room temp.
6 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temp.
1/2 cup of honey (I used blackberry)
1 TBSP. finely minced crystallized ginger
Place all the ingredients in stand mixer and mix till blended.

Crystallized ginger
    Peel and thinly slice 1 pound  fresh ginger root. Place sliced ginger in a heavy saucepan, cover with water and cook gently until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain off water.
    Weigh the cooked ginger and measure an equal amount of sugar and return to saucepan.  Add sugar and three tablespoons of water. Bring to a boil, stirring often, and cook until ginger is transparent and liquid has almost evaporated. Reduce heat and cook, stirring constantly, until almost dry.Toss cooled ginger in sugar to coat. My ginger was really liquid almost the consistency of a caramel, so I poured it onto a cookie sheet and let it cool in the freezer and then broke it into pieces, almost like a ginger brittle.