Boba Cakes Being Made Is Incredibly Satisfying To Watch
Trendy and filled with chewy tapioca pearls, boba tea can be one of life's greatest pleasures for fans of the popular dessert drink. Speaking of dessert, if you didn't think it could get any better in terms of aesthetic or flavor, you probably haven't feasted your eyes on a creamy boba cake before.
These decadent little bakes have been popping up all over Instagram in recent years, made by small bakeries and Asian-inspired tea shops like California's Hok Tea. In 2019, the company posted a video of its own Nutella boba tea cake to Instagram, cutting it in half and exposing all the dark-colored pearls spilling out from the inside. Hok Tea explained to FoodBeast that the concept for these dreamy cakes came from similar bubble tea cakes created in Asia, and that a cultural mashup was its main goal. "We always want to create a unique product that seems to represent both Western and Eastern culture."
The best part is that the cake has a lot of creative variations and doesn't have to be made in one specific way. Despite the boba balls lining the insides of Hok Tea's version, the pearls can be used as a topping if you'd prefer a mouthful of moist, spongey cake instead of an overly chewy experience. It can be served with layers of rich buttercream frosting, infused with milk tea, or transformed into a mouthwatering lava cake complete with bubble tea's classic brown sugar streaks.
Boba cake's lava is a custard-like topping instead of a filling
The most satisfying part of the boba cake baking process is the final step, which involves wrapping the top of the cooled sponge in an acetate cake collar, pouring the lava-like pastry cream and tapioca pearls on top, and removing it to let gravity do its thing. The pillowy, thick layer falls down the cake perfectly due to the airy whipped cream added into the mix, and we think this would definitely make for an eye-catching technical challenge on The Great British Baking Show.
To make your own, you can use a Thai tea recipe, or simply steep some black tea and add your preferred type of milk to mix with your dry ingredients. Ally Bakes has a really in-depth recipe with a video you can follow along with, and she offers some great pointers that make this bake look easy. She advises not to grease the pan before dumping in your cake mix, as it will have a hard time rising properly. This recipe calls for a whisked meringue as part of the batter, giving it a luscious texture that the custard-like topping complements well.
If you aren't sure how boba tea bubbles are made, Ally Bakes has tips for that too, including how to coat them with a syrupy brown sugar sauce. Of course, you can always buy premade pearls if you don't have tapioca flour on hand for making your own divine, bubble-topped bake.