Chai Cake

This delicious Chai Spice Cake is inspired by the warm spices in chai tea, with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, allspice, nutmeg, and more. These spices add fantastic flavor to this moist buttermilk cake, making it perfect for fall and winter celebrations.

Table of Contents

How to Make Chai Cake

You can find the full, printable cake recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick look at the process!

After preheating the oven and preparing the pans, we combined the dry ingredients in a medium bowl- this is the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pepper, and spices. Whisk for 30 seconds to blend. Set aside.

Next, in another bowl, we added these wet ingredients: the buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla. Set aside.

We mixed the softened butter in an electric mixer until smooth. Then, we added the white sugar and brown sugar, mixing at medium speed for 3-5 minutes until lightened and fluffy.

Next, we added the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow was blended.

Finally, with the mixer on low speed, we alternately added the dry and wet ingredients (starting with the dry ingredients). We did three additions of dry and two additions of wet.

Mix just until combined. Add to the prepared pans, and bake. Once done, allow to cool for ten minutes on a wire rack before turning out.

Cream Cheese Frosting

We love cream cheese frosting, especially when it comes to spice cakes! This simple and flavorful frosting combines softened butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, a pinch of salt, and vanilla extract.

Make sure that the cake layers have cooled completely before frosting. Cream cheese frostings are a bit softer than vanilla buttercream- if at any time the frosting or piping bag becomes too soft, just pop it in the refrigerator for a few minutes to thicken.

Decorating the Cake

Decorate the Chai Cake however you like! You'll have plenty of frosting. After filling the chai cake layers, we applied a thin "crumb coat" as we always do, and then chilled it for about ten minutes in the freezer to firm things up before applying the final coat.

After smoothing over the frosting with a spatula, we decided to get a little fancy and applied scrollwork using a disposable piping bag fitted with a piping tip 4. If you're interested in cake decorating, make sure to check out our section of Buttercream Techniques!

Recipe FAQs

Yes, just as with the majority of our cakes from white velvet cake to cherry cake, marble cake and more, these cake layers freeze beautifully.

After baking and cooling the cake layers (we often wrap while they are still a bit warm), we like to flip each layer onto its own foil wrapped cake board. Next, wrap tightly with a layer or two of plastic wrap, followed by a a layer of aluminum foil. Freeze.

To thaw, move the wrapped layers from the freezer to the kitchen counter. We like to thaw for about 30-45 minutes before unwrapping, and continuing to thaw. *Some decorators like to assemble their cakes with the layers partially frozen as they are less fragile and easier to handle.

We like to use cake flour in many of our cakes because of the lower protein content. This means less gluten formation in the cake batter, which results in a softer, more tender cake layers.

We often use buttermilk in our recipes for the boost of acidity that it adds to the cake batter. The acidic nature of buttermilk breaks down strands of gluten in the batter, which results in a more tender crumb.

Check out our ever-growing list of delicious cake recipes with buttermilk for more great ideas!

More Spice Cakes

We've made many spice cakes over the years! In addition to today's cake, don't miss our Gingerbread Pound Cake, Spice Cupcakes, Applesauce Spice Cake, Pumpkin Spice Cake, and more.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! We hope that you enjoy this recipe. Make sure to check out our full section of cake recipes as well as our cake decorating tutorials. You'll find cake recipes from scratch, cake mix recipes, pound cakes, and more.

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