TEA:

First you brew your tea like normal, with no additives. Make sure you have a few cardamom pods in the brew for added flavor.

SIMPLE SYRUP:

3 cups of sugar on the stove, with 1 cup of the brewed tea, that you bring to a high boil. You want it to look absolutely chaotic with all of the sugar dissolved before you remove it from the stove.

CAKE:

Preheat the oven to 375.

Separate your 4 eggs into their two components, and put the egg whites into your mixer on high until they reach stiff peaks.

At that point add in your 1 1/2 cups of almond cardamom cake simple syrup that you just made (approximately half of it) and continue to mix until you're back to stiff peaks.

At that point, turn off the mixer and sift your flour into the mix, and gently fold the flour into your cake mix.

Once your flour is thoroughly incorporated, place into a cake pan of your choice, and bake until the cake bounces back when you touch it. Remove from the oven and set the cake upside-down on a rack to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan and for easier removal

(OPTION A)

MOUSSE:

Clean out your mixer, then add in your heavy cream and mix until it's consistently coming together. At that point add in your 4 egg yolks, and continue until the egg yolks are well incorporated into the mixture. When they're well set, add in the rest of the almond cardamom cake simple syrup and continue mixing until you're past the mousse texture and onto a slightly heavier texture that isn't quite butter but kind of buttery.

(OPTION B)

CUSTARD:

Clean out your mixer then add in all of your ingredients except the corn starch and mix on low until everything is the same color and consistently the same. Remove from the mixer and put into a pot to boil on medium. While waiting for it to heat up, make a cornstarch slurry but in place of the water in the slurry, use some of the rest of the almond cardamom cake tea that you made earlier, and then add that to the pot and stir until it starts to get thick. Once it's thickened, remove and put the custard into a bowl to cool down to room temperature, then place into the fridge once it's room temperature with plastic wrap pressed to the top to keep it from getting crusty or dried out.

PARFAIT:

Once the cake is cooled down (about an hour after it's been removed from the oven) pull out your cutting board and cut it into pieces, it doesn't matter if they're perfectly sized or not, let's be real, this is real life, and mistakes get made and people lose patience xD

When the cake is all cut up, place some pieces into a glass cup to line the bottom and sprinkle some cinnamon into it (if you want to). Then put some custard or mousse in over top of the cake until you can no longer see the cake, and keep stacking layers until you reach the top of your cup OR you run out of cake or custard.

Sprinkle the top with cinnamon if you'd like, and voila! You've made a parfait!