All posts tagged: Matcha

Honey Matcha Castella Cake

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I told myself I wasn’t going to do any baking this week. I was going to avoid the kitchen in lieu of being productive and getting important things done in all the other areas of my life. And then the spark of an idea led to me tumbling down the rabbit hole–flipping through a handful of cookbooks and spending a solid hour furiously Googling subsequent ideas… Until not only was I in the kitchen, but I had about four projects in various stages spread across every available counter space as I vaguely listened to 30 Rock playing from my computer while sitting cross-legged in front of my oven, carefully regarding the cakes inside. Despite not understanding how the oven in my parents new house can simultaneously over and under cook the things I try to bake, my evening baking adventure turned out to be quite a success. Half following some recipes and half throwing in ingredients haphazardly like the rebel I am, I ended up with a Honey Castella Cake, Almond Matcha Mousse, Matcha Spread, …

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Matcha Cake

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I think this cake is my spirit animal. I can’t stop thinking about it! Seriously, it is so lovely with so many of my favorite flavors and yet it resists the urge to be ombre or monochromatic as so many other of my favorites have been. In the past few months, I had seen several cakes online–usually smaller cakes–that had one single chocolate covered strawberry that seemed to be dripping chocolate down the sides of the cake. Usually the strawberry was covered with dark chocolate, but when I saw that I thought 1) if one strawberry is good, a bunch must be better, and 2) why not use white chocolate and then add matcha to bring out the color and flavor of the red strawberries? So I did. For the base of the cake, I used my favorite Miette Hot Milk Cake Recipe, but I added Matcha Powder to half of the batter and spooned the batter into my prepared cake pans in spoonfuls to get a nice mix of green and white/vanilla and matcha …

Matcha White Hot Chocolate

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If you are already making a Matcha Cake and Matcha Meringues…you might as well just go for the complete kitchen explosion of Matcha and make Matcha Hot Chocolate right?! Okay so I don’t know if the total matcha overload was completely necessary…But it was all delicious so whatever. (Also more than a “recipe” I think this should be called “Things Maddie Likes All Thrown Into The Same Pan”….. so feel free to change the ratio to your own liking and taste without feeling like you are cheating or going against the recipe). In the US it is relatively hard to find matcha lattes, and when you do find them (Starbucks does carry them even though they aren’t on the menu) they tend to taste more like milk and vanilla than the earthy, grassy, bitter matcha that I know and love. Japan–especially my short time in Kyoto–spoiled me for life. (Though that doesn’t stop me from getting matcha/green tea lattes whenever they are on a menu! Also wow am I using a lot of parenthesis today…lol) …

Matcha Meringue Cake

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I’ve been thinking about this cake basically since I came back from Korea in December. I am not quite sure why it took so long for me to actually make it (seriously it is not difficult at all) and it is actually ridiculous how satisfied I am now that it has been made…and completely devoured. I’m not kidding about being devoured–its a 6″ cake like most I make are, and it was completely gone within 6 hours of being made even though I had no occasion to make it for. It was that delicious. And I’m going to go ahead and take credit for how good it was, because besides using the Miette cookbook for the sponge cake, everything about the cake was my own design and recipe. I am going to try to stop looking at the pictures while I focus on writing this blog post, but it might be hard. Did you look at it?! Its like a fairytale wonderland! The sponge-like consistency of Miette’s Hot Milk Cake is light but holds up …

Caramels Flavored with Tea

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I make friends by bribing them into liking me via food. How do you do that when you aren’t on the same continent as them? Well by mailing them sugar of course. While I wold love to send my cakes all over the world, for now I have been sticking to caramels, as they stay fresh for a long time and they travel without becoming mutilated in a mailer envelope. I first mailed caramels to Japan two years ago–but you know me, one time of making regular, unflavored caramels was enough and I was ready to move on to a new recipe and a new flavor. The next time I mailed caramels I made Earl Grey Caramels and Apple Cider Caramels–and while both had good flavors and successfully made it to Japan, the Earl Grey Caramel recipe naturally had a better/easier to handle texture. So this time I dug out my Earl Grey Caramel recipe, but with the intention of making it with a different flavor. Actually, with four different flavors. Yes you heard me …

抹茶と蜂蜜ケーキ aka Matcha and Honey Cake

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I have always loved Thanksgiving. For one, its a food centered holiday, and what is better than food? And two, it is a great opportunity to take a break from the hectic pace of life in order to spend some quality time with family and friends, catching up and giving you the motivation you need to keep going even after the holiday ends. One thing I have started to appreciate as much as the traditional Thanksgiving, though, is a little thing called Friendsgiving. Friendsgiving, usually occurring before or after Thanksgiving, takes all the important elements of Thanksgiving like food, special people, and a general feeling of thankfulness, but does not require extended family or traditional foods. Last year I was in Japan, and my Friendsgiving consisted of me, an American friend and some Japanese friends going out to 焼き肉食べ放題, or all you can eat grilled meat. This year, my international friends from school wanted to celebrate with a pot luck, as they were stuck in the dorms all weekend. While most of the other girls …