No Bake Earl Grey Crepe Cake

Thought that this would be a useful no-bake cake recipe if you’re still having difficulty finding a cake for celebrations these couple of days or just simply, having difficulty finding ingredients to bake during the Circuit Breaker period! This recipe was adapted from here, came across it cos was looking to make something for the folks that (a) wasn’t cake-cake, (b) doesn’t have cheese and (b) wasn’t sweet at all.

This crepe cake recipe is one of my favorites cos of so many reasons…

1. It requires little ingredients on hand but you can still make it look pretty. No baking powder, baking soda, brown sugar, butter and cream cheese needed- the main ingredients that are difficult to find in supermarkets right now 😫😫

2. NO oven needed, which is great if you don’t have one on hand now. You just need a hand whisk/electric whisk and a flat pan.

Only down side is that it can be a little time consuming; had a new found appreciation for crepe cakes after this. But the end product..you get a beautiful earl grey crepe cake! Unfortunately I didn't get to snap a picture of my end product (*cough* greedy *cough*) but look at this glorious beauty below by The Social Tea House.

Image Credit: The Social Tea House

Made a few amendments to the recipe in the video, mainly (a) the type of tea leaves used, (b) doubling the recipe for sufficient layers to make it higher and to look more “cake-like” and (c) making a earl grey infused filling. These are all reflected in the recipe below. Small note, this recipe below requires you to steep the milk in tea leaves the day before so be sure to do that the day before you’re making the custard/crepe cake! It's just putting the tea bags in the milk overnight to steep so it's pretty easy 😄

However, the steps are pretty much the same as the video so feel free to refer to it for the step-by-step pictorial instructions! Ingredients and instructions are extracted below for ease of reference too. Enjoy!

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Ingredients:

A (Crepe Batter):

• 6 eggs

• 110ml vegetable oil

• 110g sugar

• 220g cake flour

• 20g earl grey tea leaves, cut open the sachet

• 740ml milk (steep 8 tea bags in this milk the night before)

B (Filling):

• 2 eggs

• 120g sugar

• 40g cake flour

• 400ml milk (steep 4 tea bags in this milk the night before)

• 300ml whipping cream

Steps for Crepe Batter

1. Mix eggs and vegetable oil together. Whisk till combined.

2. Add sugar into mixture and mix till combined.

3. Sift cake flour and earl grey tea leaves into mixture in batches. Mix till smooth. Repeat till all cake flour and tea leaves have finished

4. Add the earl grey milk into mixture, approx. ¼ cup at a time. Add in more milk only when batter seems fully combined. This is to prevent splitting of the batter.

5. Pour batter through a sift, cling wrap the bowl and cool in fridge for 1-2hrs. Gently stir the crepe batter when you take it out of the fridge.

6. Lightly grease pan. Scoop a ladle of batter into the pan. Twirl batter around in the pan to ensure that batter gets evenly distributed.

7. Flip when the edges of the crepe layer starts crisping up and bubbles form on the crepe layer. Cook for about 20 seconds on the other side or when bubbles start to form. Continue till all batter is finished!

Steps for custard cream

1. Whisk egg and sugar in a large bowl.

2. Sift cake flour and whisk till well combined and there are no lumps

3. Add the earl grey milk in batches (approx. ¼ cup at a time), stir till combined and repeat till all milk is added in

4. Heat mixture over medium heat and stir continuously. Do not stop stirring or lumps will form.

5. Heat till mixture bubble and thickens (forms a thickkk coat on the back of spoon/spatula).

6. Pour mixture into bowl and cover with cling wrap. Make sure to place cling wrap on top of the custard to prevent a skin from forming.

7. Chill mixture till completely cold.

8. Whip whipping cream till soft peaks.

9. Add custard into mixture and mix till well combined.

Assembling the cake

1. Stack the crepe layers and trim the sides off, into desired size of the cake (mine was 6 inch). [You could use a 6-inch cake tin/cake board and cut the sides off. If you don’t have a 6 inch cake tin, draw a 6 inch circle out on a paper/cardboard/hard surface, place it against your crepe layers and cut the crepe layers according to the outline you’ve traced out!]

2. Layer with the custard cream till completed! If you wanna decorate it further, whip some whipping cream or use the remaining filling to frost the sides as well!