Proper Green Tea Cake with White Choc Frosting

So rather than my weird green tea mug cake yesterday, which really was only a tester to see if the green tea powder I bought on Saturday was suitable for cakes (I don't think it is, but oh well...), I baked a proper green tea cake today!

The reason is simple: I had an exam today (it SUCKED. But I was kinda lucky - I had a feeling exchange rates would come up, so I concentrated especially hard on that, and guess what! Two questions on it! I chose those two and my third question was on financial crises, the contagion effect and how to forecast financial crises. It was all relevant to my dissertation, so I made lots of references to that and the coursework for this module :D) and I wanted to reward myself. Plus, Hong is coming over tomorrow, and I promised her on Saturday that the next time she came, I'd have a green tea cake waiting for her. Whether or not it's good is a completely different issue... :P

Anyway! I found a recipe that seemed promising, but I didn't like the idea of making the cream cheese frosting because, quite frankly, there isn't enough space in our fridge to keep a whole cake for a few days. I was going to make a buttercream frosting with green tea powder added for flavour and colour, but then I thought that white chocolate complement the cake really well, if somewhat sweet.

Is it just me or is baking cakes getting easier?

Here's the recipe I followed! (From this site)


Green Tea Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
4-5 tsp powdered green tea (my green tea was a little mild, so I added another 2 tsp)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup plain yogurt

1) Preheat oven to 175-180C. Grease and line/flour/whatever you prefer two 9" round cake tins.
2) Sieve flour, baking soda, powdered green tea and salt into a bowl and mix well. Set aside.
3) In another bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs until smooth. Stir in vanilla.
4) Beat in flour, alternating with yogurt. (Actually, I forgot to buy yogurt, so I replaced it with 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vinegar, left to stand for 5 minutes)
5) Once the batter is mixed well, pour evenly into two pans.
6) Bake in oven for 30-40mins or until cooked (i.e. when a toothpick or wooden skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean)


After that, I used my old recipe for white chocolate frosting:

Melt 200g white chocolate. Set aside to cool. Beat 200g butter until soft. Slowly beat in white chocolate, 500g sifted icing sugar, and 2 tbsp milk.

When frosting, I used the tip I got from Bakerella to poke holes in the cake and spritz it with a plain sugar syrup to help it keep its moistness. I'm so glad I bought that extra spray bottle from Muji! :P But there was a heck load of icing... I think there was probably more icing than cake in certain parts of it! :P I'd used the icing to even out the cake a little, you see, so some parts of the cake have a very thick layer of icing in the middle.

After frosting, I thought it looked rather plain, so I tried to sprinkle those silver balls on it. Nope, frosting had already hardened. Silver balls rolled right off. Then I tried dusting it with my last packet of green tea powder. Maybe I should've left it plain -___-"" It looks sooooo weird now! Sorry no pictures today :P

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand here are the results! :D

The Verdict
Ingredients: Most of the ingredients are basics, as usual, except for the powdered green tea and yogurt. The powdered green tea.... If you get the good quality ones, which I'm sure would make a difference in the taste of your cake, it can be quite expensive. I don't know if I'll make enough green tea stuff to warrant getting a pot of the expensive type, but maybe I should find recipes for that :D Just as a warning, the green tea powder I used was the SUPER cheap kind that's already sweetened and comes in little sachets :P

Easiness: Really REALLY easy to make. Not much different from all the other cakes I've baked!

Texture: WOW the first cake that isn't crumbly at all! Very soft and moist. Mmmm. I think I'm going to try using this cake recipe (without the green tea) as a plain cake recipe and see how it goes. Maybe I'll replace the oil with melted butter and see how the taste goes, because the texture is perfect.

Taste: The icing is super super sweet. But also super delicious and creamy. Yummm. Unfortunately, if you eat too much icing, it kind of kills the taste of the cake :( The cake on its own is fine, but doesn't have much green tea taste. I think the powder I used was too mild!

Will I use this recipe again? At least one more time, but with a better tea so I can see how it'll taste when the tea is stronger! I'm sooooo in love with the texture of this cake.....

It only took me four hours to make it this time, mainly because I now have two cake tins instead of one :D I'm getting faster!

Just as a random note, when I was in Waitrose today, I saw bottles and bottles of brandy sauce being sold for 15p (yes, that's right, 15 PENCE! £0.15!) because they were expiring at the end of this month and I couldn't resist - I bought one.

Only thing is, I have no idea what to eat it with! I mean, yeah, sure Christmas pudding, but this isn't the season for that! I could also have it spread over plain butter biscuits, or poured over ice cream, but all that sounds so.... dull. I want a more interesting recipe dammit! If I hadn't just baked a cake, I would have tried using it as a filling for another cake.

Any ideas, anyone?