Green Tea Marble Cake

Oh hai beloved oven! I have missed you so! Man, can you tell I'm super happy that the weather is cooling off a bit? I've been dying to get back to doing some baking (I mean, baking of stuff other than beets...) and now that things are calmer at work, I finally had the time (and energy) to do a little experimenting in the kitchen. (Of course, this meant that I totally forgot to eat an actual dinner, but er, um, cake batter is totally a good form of sustenance?) Anyway, I really wanted to try making marble cake, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to make green tea and ginger marble cake, or green tea and chocolate, so I did what any modern person does these days when they need help making a decision--I polled my Facebook friends list. (I suppose if I were REALLY modern, I would have used Twitter.) Naturally, they were no help at all, and suggested additional combinations! Hmph.


In the end, I just made up a batch of basic marble cake batter and went nuts. And by nuts, I really just mean that I made green tea and ginger cake, and then brought back the old favorite, self-frosting Nutella cake with the leftover batter. Isn't this lineup cute? For scale, the smallest cake is only about 3 inches long by 1 inch wide. The largest pan is a silicone loaf pan I picked up from Muji and it holds about half of an average 8.5x4.5 loaf pan. I haven't really baked with silicone pans before, so I thought it was really amazing when the cake basically just slipped out without me even having to run a knife around the edges!


I am quite pleased with how the marbling came out (in the top photo). I am less pleased by how the Nutella ones look--let's be honest. They are downright ugly! I was a little hampered in my Nutella-swirling efforts by the size of these little baking molds, but gosh!


They look much better from this angle! Anyway, these are a variation on the much blogged about self-frosting Nutella cupcakes, which are such a genius idea. Basically all you do is dollop some Nutella straight on top of your unbaked cake batter, and swirl it in. As it bakes, some of it gets crusty, some of it gets melty, and all of it gets delicious.

I haven't decided yet which version I like better--the ginger version seems moister, somehow, but the ginger overpowers the green tea a little. I'm pretty sure I need to go have another slice of each, to be sure....

Green Tea and Ginger Marble Cake adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking
12 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 cups white whole wheat flour (or all purpose)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons matcha (green tea) powder
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped, crystallized ginger

Preheat the oven to 325. Decide on what shape and number of cakes you want to use, but this recipe is sized for a standard loaf pan. If you want to try both the ginger and the nutella versions, you could also consider making this into cupcakes!

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Beat the butter until smooth, then add the sugar and beat until thoroughly combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, making sure each is incorporated before adding the next. Stir in vanilla. On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk (beginning and ending with the flour). Beat just until the ingredients are combined.

At this point, you are ready to flavor. If you're just making one loaf, then divide your batter roughly in half into two bowls. To one, add the matcha, and stir until the batter is all a glorious, Hulk-green. Stir the ginger chips into the other bowl. If you're going to make some Nutella versions as well, you can go ahead and divide the batters into two bowls, but set aside some of the green tea batter.

For the marble cake, you have two options--either alternately drop spoonfuls of the two different batters into your prepared pans, and then swirl with a knife, or, and this is what I do (because I am lazy), just pour your green tea batter into the bowl with the ginger batter, and give the whole thing a couple of quick folds, as if you were folding egg whites. Don't mix the batters, you're just aiming for streaks here. Pour into your prepared pan.

If you are making the Nutella version, take your leftover green tea batter, and spoon or pour into smaller tins or muffin cups. How much Nutella you add is up to you; the more you add, the harder it is to swirl in an aesthetically pleasing manner, but on the other hand, the more Nutella, the more delicious! Drop dollops of Nutella directly onto the surface of the batter with a spoon, then take a knife or a skewer, and give it a couple of swirls. Bake until the cakes are set and pulling away from the edges of the pan slightly; a skewer will come out clean (a few crumbs of Nutella are fine). In the pans I used, the mini cakes took about 15 minutes, the largest pan took about 45.

McVitie's Green Tea Biscuits

Two things first: I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and was kind of disappointed! I think I prefer the original. Although if they made this into a movie with Colin Firth (and, heck, throw in Clive Owen too), then I would probably re-assess my position. Secondly, according to Sitemeter, I have finally crossed the 10,000 visit threshhold! Woohoo! I know that's totally small potatoes to most bloggers, but I am easily made happy, what can I say! So, thanks visitors!


The other day, I was feeling rather down after seeing the man off so I went on a shopping spree at Mitsuwa and some Chinese grocery stores back home. You know all those rules about how to avoid impulse buying? Yeah, not one of those held with me, which is how I ended up with this little bag of McVitie's Green Tea Digestive Biscuits. I loooove their regular digestives (not to mention the chocolate dipped ones and ESPECIALLY the chocolate caramel--the last time we were in London I think I bought about 5 tubes) and I usually like green tea anything, so into the basket they went. And look! The logo and everything. Okay, I know this photo doesn't give a good sense of scale, but check it out--these are really little.


See? Wee! You know I'm a sucker for anything miniaturized. There are about 8 in one of these little snack-sized bags. But, enough about that--how does it taste? Pretty good, actually!


The green tea filling actually tastes like green tea, which is nice (and a change from other green tea flavored snacks, which sometimes taste like white chocolate colored green). Of course, I love the digestive biscuit, no question about that. Together, they are a little bit sweeter than I normally go for, but with a hot cup of tea (naturally), they are a great snack. I have to go and buy more bags now (well, after I finish watching Ninja Warrior) so excuse me!

Green tea ice cream

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In baking, sometimes even a disaster can still have a happy ending. I was going to turn those horribly ugly cupcakes into cake crumbs for future use, but it just so happened that last week I tried a recipe for homemade green tea ice cream...and then I promptly forgot about it in the freezer. (Forgetting things is a seriously bad habit of mine.) But actually, it's good that I forgot about it, because now I can have (trimmed up) chocolate cake and green tea ice cream. Hey, all right!

This recipe is from Elizabeth Andoh's Japanese cookbook, Washoku; it's a really terrific resource for homestyle Japanese recipes. It is about as simple as you can get for ice cream (no need for an ice cream maker!) and as long as you have good quality tea, it's really delicious. It's not as creamy as the ice cream I buy, but I also suspect that it's a lot less caloric. And if you are more diligent about whipping it than I was, it'll be smoother.

Green Tea Ice Cream
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1/2 teaspoon mirin
2 teaspoons matcha
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup half-and-half

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water. Stir the mixture over low heat to melt the sugar and continue to simmer for about 5 minutes, or until syrupy. Add the mirin (which I omitted), stir, and remove the pan from the heat. In a small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon of the warm syrup and matcha and stir until dissolved. Return this sweet tea concentrate to the saucepan and stir until completely blended. To retain optimal aroma and ensure an intense jade color, do not reheat the mixture. Stir in the milk and half-and-half and mix thoroughly.

Pour the tea and milk mixture into a flat, shallow, freezer-safe container. Tap the container gently on a countertop to force out any air bubbles. Cover and freeze for 1 1/2 hours or until nearly firm. With a handheld mixer, whip the mixture vigorously in a deep bowl. Return the mixture to the same container, re-cover, and freeze again for another 45 minutes, or until firm throughout. Repeat the whipping step one more time to achieve a silkier texture. Makes about 1 pint (unless you keep tasting it).

Green tea shortbread

Considering that the word "cookie" is actually in the title of my blog, I have not posted much at all about cookies--so, I guess it's fitting that I'm (finally) writing about what I consider to be my "signature" cookie. I mean, if I have to choose a favorite, of course :D Plus, this cookie recipe got me onto the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC to chat with Leonard and Ruth Reichl during his Christmas cookie show. You can still listen to the clip here, although I sound like a complete dork because I was about to collapse from nervousness. (As an aside, you should all listen to Leonard Lopate. He's great.)

Like all shortbreads, this is a good "keeper" cookie and will remain fresh and delicious for at least 3 weeks, if you keep them in an airtight container. It is very quick to put together and consists of only 5 ingredients; as is true for all shortbreads, using the freshest butter you can find is very important. If you use stale butter, you won't taste anything but the inside of your refrigerator. (Please for the love of all that is delicious, don't use shortening or margarine.)


Besides the butter, your other most important ingredient is going to be your matcha (also spelled maccha). This is essentially green tea ground into a fine powder and it's sold in Japanese and most Asian groceries; I buy mine at Mitsuwa Market in Edgewater. The current brand I'm using (above) is Yamashiro Ujji Maccha. If you can't find any in your area, then pick a good quality loose leaf green tea and grind it yourself!

I made this batch for my friend Jack's birthday, but as you can see, I snuck a few. One must perform quality control, right?

Matcha Shortbread
2 C all purpose flour
2 Tb good quality green tea powder (matcha)
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 C powdered sugar and 1/4 C granulated sugar

Sift flour and green tea into a bowl; set aside. Beat the butter until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Sift in the two sugars (and actually you could use all powdered sugar) and salt and continue to beat until well combined and paler in color; this should take another 2 minutes. Add the flour and green tea mixture and mix just until everything is combined and the dough sticks together; don't overmix or you'll have tough cookies. Form the dough into a flat disk, wrap in plastic, and chill for an hour.

Preheat oven to 325 F. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4" and cut into shapes. Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and chill until the cookies are firm (15 minutes or so). Bake for 8-10 minutes until the cookies are set; don't let them brown or you'll lose the nice pale green color. Repeat with the remaining dough.