Japanese Pumpkin Chai Mousse Cake!

As promised, here is the “Cake that will blow you away!” It is a Japanese pumpkin chai mousse cake. It’s “pumpkin pie meets chai and they start to make out on a wedding cake!”. The base is a basic white cake with added chai spices… I call it the “lazy man’s chai cake”. It’s hardly an acceptable chai cake but it is there only to serve as a base and not compete with the intense flavor of the mousse. The mousse is made of Kabocha squash which has many names such as sweet mama squash and Japanese pumpkin. It’s a neat squash that doesn’t really shrink when it’s cooked the way ibutternut squash does. The flavor is akin to pumpkin, butternut and yams all mixed together. You could, technically, use a normal pumpkin… but it’s a lot more fun to use a Japanese one!

This cake takes a whle to make. Make sure you have a good two hours to make this as well as an hour for the cake to settle in the fridge.



Cake base

1 vanilla cake or basic white cake recipe (one that uses about 2 cups of flour)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon turmeric (for color)
¼ - ½ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ - ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
6 small cheesecake pans (or one 8” cheesecake pan for a bigger cake)

As you make your basic white cake, add the spices to the dry ingredients. Combine dry and wet ingredients and pour into 6 small cheesecake pans. Bake as per instructions (normally about 20-25 minutes). When the cakes come out, place them in the freezer (to get the cheesecake pans to cool down quickly). When they have cooled down, cut off a slice off the bottom of the cake if the cake takes up more than ½ of the cheesecake pan. Save them for later to make “star cut outs”.

Pumpkin Chai mousse

½ Kabocha squash. Inside scooped out and discarded. Cubed. Peeled
¼ cup soy milk

2 cups water
1 cup soy milk (+ up to 1 cup as needed)
5 chai tea bags
4 tablespoons (1 stick) Agar Agar
¾ cup + 2 tablespoons maple syrup or rice syrup
2 tablespoons agave nectar

¼ cup soy milk
2 tablespoons arrowroot (or cornstarch…but arrowroot is better)

Place the cubed squash in a steamer for about 30 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together a slurry using the ¼ cup of soy milk and the arrowroot.

Place 2 cups of water in a small saucepan on medium heat until water starts to steam but not boil. Place 3 teabags and stir around, pressing down on the teabags regularly with a spatula to infuse lots of flavor. After 5 minutes, remove the teabags and discard. Add 1 cup of soy milk and 2 teabags and repeat the earlier process for another 5 minutes. Discard the teabags. Shred the agar with your hands and place the pieces into the steaming liquid. Stir regularly until agar is fully dissolved. This may take several minutes.

Place the steamed squash into a blender (you should have about 1 ½ cups – packed – of steamed squash) along with ¼ cups of soy milk. Blend into a smooth slurry.

Once agar is fully dissolved, measure into a bowl, how much chai/agar liquid you have. Add enough soy milk to equal 3 cups and return the mixture into the saucepan and back onto the stove. Add the sweetener and the squash mixture and whisk well to combine. Stir regularly and allow the mixture to almost reach a slow boil. Add the soy milk/arrowroot slurry and mix well. Allow mixture to heat to the same point again while stirring continuously. The mixture will feel a lot thicker. Remove from heat.

Place the tiny cheesecake pans on the bottom shelf of your fridge. Bring the saucepan to the fridge (this avoids a big mess) and spoon the mixture onto the cakes until the pans are almost overflowing with yummy pumpkin goodness. Pop any bubbles that form with a fork before you close the fridge door. If you have any mixture left over, place it into a small bowl and place wax paper onto the surface to avoid it forming a skin… place it in the fridge and save it for a midnight craving. Allow the cakes to cool for a full 1 or 2 hours… preferably overnight.

Using a cookie cutter, cut out cute shapes out of the “cake bottoms” and place the shapes into a ziplock bag until you’re ready to serve the cakes.

To serve the cake, run a small knife along the edge of the cheesecake pan to loosen the mousse from the pan. Open the cheesecake pan and place the cake onto a place. Top with “cake shapes”. Enjoy!