My Vitalife cooking grade Matcha finally arrived and after a lot of research into green tea flavoured confectionery I whittled my chosen recipes down to two: Matcha shortbread and Matcha green tea mini cakes with raspberries. I started with the cakes as they had a shorter cooking time and I’d just purchased fresh raspberries.
I adore the flavour of Matcha which I’ve been drinking for a while but I couldn’t bring myself to use the ceremonial grade tea for baking as it’s so expensive. The cooking grade powder looks like a slightly dulled version of the tea but it’s vibrant enough and works well in food. It comes in 100g quantities so I’ll be cooking with Matcha a lot over the upcoming months.
I intended to find a Matcha chocolate cake recipe but when I came across Anne’s Matcha raspberry cake recipe I couldn’t resist. The cakes looked gorgeous but I wasn’t able to get hold of the cannelé moulds that Anne uses so I decided to try a variety of cake containers instead. I purchased cardboard cases from Lakeland (no need to grease, no need for a tin) and I also used a mini muffin tin. I was curious to see if my tin really was non-stick so I lined half of it with paper cases and left the other half empty, greased with a little butter (it turns out that it truly is non-stick).
As for the cakes, they were every bit as lovely as I’d hoped. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and so these cakes were great; just sweet enough to balance the slight bitterness of the Matcha and the raspberries and almonds meld everything together perfectly. Anne, thank you very much for this amazing recipe!
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Mix the sugar and butter together in a large bowl (I used an electric whisk to do this).
- Crack in the eggs and mix well then sift in the flour and baking powder a little at a time, whisking as you go. Once you've used up all the flour, mix the ground almonds in.
- Heat the milk gently in a saucepan and when it startes to steam turn off the heat. Add the Matcha and whisk well ensuring that there are no lumps. I used a small electric whisk (an Aerolatte) to do this.
- Pour the matcha into the cake mixture and whisk until you have a light green batter.
- Divide the mixture into a 12-cup muffin tin or alternatively you could use a 24-cup mini muffin tin. Top the cakes with a few raspberries (cut in half for the mini cakes) and push them into the mixture.
- If you're using a 12-cup muffin tin bake for 25 minutes. For a mini muffin tin bake for 18-20 minutes. The cakes should look lightly golden when you remove them from the oven.
