The Best Milk Tea Boba Cake

Your classic milk tea with boba pearls, but make it into a cake! This milk tea boba cake represents everyone’s favourite bubble tea drink and will impress all your friends and family. The base is a light and fluffy genoise sponge cake topped with a mascarpone royal milk tea cream, and a mountain of boba pearls on top.

Genoise Cake in Milk Tea Boba Cake

Genoise is an Italian sponge cake made without any leaveners (baking soda or powder). It’s made from whipping eggs into a meringue and carefully folding in the flour. This cake is pretty common in Korean bakeries and it’s soft, light and goes well with a variety of flavours. I chose to make a genoise as the base because it uses basic ingredients and is fairly easy to make. That light and fluffy cake really complements the milk tea flavour and the boba pearls.

Genoise is made from using basic ingredients that are easy to find and you can use a few substitutions. Here are the ingredients that go into this genoise cake for my milk tea boba cake:

• Eggs – Eggs are the most important ingredient as it acts as the leavener. Whipping the egg whites with sugar creates a meringue, making the cake fluffy and light. I use 2 eggs in this recipe.
  
  
• Granulated Sugar – To sweeten the cake, sugar is necessary. I add it to the egg yolks and to the egg whites, using a total of 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp of granulated sugar.
  
  
• Cake Flour – Most genoise cakes use cake flour however, I rarely have cake flour at home. A common substitution for cake flour is by adding cornstarch to all-purpose flour. To simplify this further, I add 1 tsp of cornstarch directly to the egg yolk mixture, then sift in regular all-purpose flour.
  
  
• Milk – Only 1 Tbsp is used to help thin out the batter slightly.
  
  
• Oil – I chose vegetable oil but any neutral oil can be used. Melted unsalted butter can be used too.
  
  
• Vanilla Extract or Paste – I use a little bit of vanilla bean paste to flavour the cake. This isn’t necessary but I like the specks of vanilla throughout the cake.

How to get a light and fluffy genoise

Genoise is fairly easy to make but there are a few tips to ensure your cake comes out light and fluffy. You can expect a bit of shrinkage after baking, but no more than 10-15%, otherwise the cake will be too dense. I tested this genoise recipe around 5 times, but now I’m super happy with how it turned out! I hope these tips work for you as well :)!

• Don’t overwhip the egg whites: The fluffiness of the cake comes from whipped egg whites. While whipping, add the sugar in batches and whip until it forms a medium peak. Egg whites should be able to hold their shape and be smooth and glossy. Overwhipping will create a lumpy batter that will deflate easily.
  
  
• Sift your flour in batches: Sift your flour in two batches. This will prevent lumps and prevent the egg whites from deflating.
  
  
• Don’t grease your cake pan: We’re often used to greasing our cake pans right? In this case, you don’t need to because the cake needs something to stick to as it bakes, like angel food cake. Use parchment paper on the bottom and around the sides of the cake pan. As the cake bakes, it will stick to the parchment paper and expand. Once the cake is cool, the parchment paper will easily peel off.
  
  
• Keep the oven door closed: Every time you open the oven door, you risk deflating the meringue. Keep the light of your oven on near the end of baking to watch for even brownness on top of the cake. Remove the cake around the 25-minute mark, or when your cake is golden brown on top.

Milk Tea Flavour

We can’t have a bubble tea cake without the classic milk tea flavour, am I right? To replicate that classic bubble tea milk tea flavour, I chose to use Nitto Kocha’s Royal Milk Tea Powder to flavour the cream. The base of this milk tea powder is a slightly floral black tea and it’s sweetened with milk and sugar. Honestly, this milk tea powder is so good, I like to drink it with pearls to make my own boba at home haha! You can find this milk tea powder online on Amazon or at your local Asian supermarket.

If you can’t find this milk tea powder, steep 2-3 tbsp of heavy cream with a black tea bag of your choice. Assam black tea, Ceylon black tea, and even oolong tea would be a good option. Make sure you steep the tea and squeeze out the cream from the tea bag to get maximal flavour! If you chose to use tea bags, don’t forget to add an additional tbsp of sugar to the whipping cream because the Royal Milk Tea is already slightly sweetened.

Lastly, because I really love salty cheese foam with my boba, I added a bit of mascarpone cheese to the cream. It adds a bit of richness and a slight bit of saltiness which I love. If you can’t find mascarpone cheese, you can definitely omit it and just use heavy cream. But if you do have it, I recommend adding some to level up this milk tea boba cake even more.

Looking for more bubble tea desserts? Check out my Boba Cream Puffs on the blog!