Yuzu and Green Tea Madeira Cake

The Formula 1 Foods challenge, over at Caroline Makes, invites us to produce something that is either typical of the cuisine of the country where the latest round of the F1 GP is taking place, or is inspired by some aspect of life in that country. Baking for the Japanese race, held last weekend, proved quite difficult as bread, cakes and desserts do not play a large part in traditional Japanese cuisine.

However, Western foods are making a growing impression on the Japanese. They both adapt products to their own tastes - witness green tea or cherry blossom flavoured KitKats - and embrace a concept whole-heartedly and excel at producing it themselves. The range of bread and pastries available in department store food halls and specialist shops, ranging from baguettes, through almond croissants to tartes aux fruit and chocolate gateaux is some of the best I've seen (and tasted) outside France.

As I couldn't bake something Japanese, I decided to reverse the concept again, and bring popular Japanese flavours into something quintessentially British - the Madeira cake! I followed the traditional Madeira recipe - 175g each of butter and caster sugar, 3 eggs and 250g SR flour - and added 3 tablespoons of yuzu juice. Then I removed about 1/3 of the batter and stirred in 2 teaspoons matcha (green tea powder), to give a quite vividly coloured batter.

The two batters were layered into a 2lb loaf tin, starting and ending with the plain coloured batter, The cake was baked at 170C for 55 minutes, or until a test probe came out clean.
After the cake was cool, I made a thick glacé icing with icing sugar and 1 tablespoon yuzu juice, and drizzled it over the cake.

I made a few miscalculations about how much batter to use when building up the layers and ended up with a large green layer near the top of the cake, I also expected the two colours of batter to swirl naturally as the cake baked to make a classic marble cake, but this didn't happen, so the cut cake looks a little strange. All I needed to do was run a chopstick through the batter to swirl it myself - I'll know better next time!

The flavour of the cake was quite delicate, as befits a Madeira cake, which is usually only flavoured with a hint of lemon, and the slight bitterness of the green tea was a good contrast to the sweetness of the rest of the cake, especially the icing, where the flavour of yuzu was much stronger.

Chilli-Chocolate and Green Tea Marble Cake

for a Clandestine Cake Club 'Mad Hatter's Tea Party'.

I went to my first Clandestine Cake Club meeting recently; I joined the organisation almost a year ago, but this is the first local event that has been arranged since then. The theme for the cakes was Alice in Wonderland, and the meeting was called, appropriately, a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

I have to admit I was thrown a bit by the theme; I'd hoped just to bake something with spectacular flavours, but my cake was obviously going to need some decoration too. I haven't decorated a novelty cake since my youngest child stopped having that sort of birthday cake about 25 years ago, so I approached the task with some trepidation. After seeing lots of  'bunny bottoms' on cupcakes while I was researching the theme (basically using Google Images!), I decided to make a large version using my bundt tin as the basis of the rabbit hole, with a fondant icing white rabbit disappearing down into it. Making the back end of a rabbit seemed infinitely easier than making a whole rabbit or even the front end of one, especially as the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland was dressed, and carried a watch!

I choose the flavours for the cake to fit in with the 'tea party' theme by using green tea and chocolate layers in a marble cake, and flavouring the chocolate layer with chilli too, as an extra 'madcap' idea. I used my favourite recipe for a marbled bundt cake - the reduced size version of this Alice Medrich recipe which I use here. For this version I used sunflower oil instead of olive oil, and added almost half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper to the cocoa mixture and two tablespoons of green tea powder to the plain layer.

The decorations were made from fondant icing and edible wafer flowers, plus two chocolate 'bunny paws'. I needed the best part of 500g of fondant icing sugar to make enough modelling fondant to fill the hole and make the legs and tail of the rabbit, and 250g of green ready to roll fondant for the grass and flower leaves. The top photo was taken before I roughed up the 'tail' by cutting into the fondant ball with a pair of scissors to make it look more like fur - it was quite an effective technique, as you can see in the photo to the left.

Neither of the cake flavours were overwhelming, and the bitterness of the green tea was nicely balanced by the lingering warmth of the chilli and the sweetness of the fondant icing. It was fortunate that I didn't use too much chilli, as many of the Cake Club participants were mothers who had brought their young children along (something I hadn't expected!).

This was a small meeting, although a few more cakes arrived after I'd taken my photos. The theme was quite loosely interpreted, so I needn't have worried about not doing enough! The gorgeous pink and purple Cheshire Cat cake was flavoured with almonds and rosewater, and was really delicious, and there were two other cakes using tea - a fruited tea loaf and an Earl Grey loaf with lemon icing. I also got to bring home slices of the cakes that I was too full to sample during the meeting, so I think the only thing I didn't taste at all was the strawberry tart.

Chocolate Brownies with Coconut and Matcha Cream Cheese Swirl

When the theme of this month's We Should Cocoa challenge was set, by Katie at Recipe for Perfection, to be brownies, I thought I'd better rise to the occasion and do something out of the ordinary. I wanted something which would both look and taste different to a plain brownie. Don't get me wrong - there's not much that can beat the best dense, fudgy, rich, sweet, chocolate-laden brownie for flavour, but if you've made and photographed as many brown squares as I have over the years, you want to make something which will stand out in a baking challenge.

And nothing stands out as much as something green, when it comes to cake! Blue and green are supposed to be the worst food colours to use, to persuade people to eat something, particularly if the food is unfamiliar, or it's an unexpected colour to be used in that context.  Whereas green used to suggest only mint flavour, today it's just as likely to be green tea (matcha) providing the flavour, as with these brownies.

Once I'd decided to use green tea, which pairs very well with dark chocolate, it was difficult to decide on what other flavour to add, if any. I like citrus flavours with green tea, but not in brownies, and ginger might have worked well, but my last cake was a ginger cake. I think I must dream about food, even if I don't remember these dreams, because I woke up one morning thinking of coconut. I hadn't a clue whether the two flavours would work well together, but it seemed worth the risk! To make the green tea stand out against the dark chocolate, it became clear that adding both it and the coconut to a cream cheese swirl was the best way forward.

I used the coconut cream cheese swirl from this recipe, adding a tablespoon of matcha powder. The amount of add depends on the strength of the matcha used - mine doesn't seem especially strong, from previous experience. (I used a 200g pack of full-fat cream cheese and 40g desiccated coconut as a conversion of 1/2 cup.) I decided to adapt my favourite brownie recipe, an 'old-faithful' that I've been using for more than 10 years, although it's hardly recognisable in this form. I made 2/3 of a batch and decided the time was right to try reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe, from 400g to 300g. I used coconut oil instead of butter, and also decided that 2 eggs plus an egg white was a near enough equivalent of 2/3 of 4 eggs (to avoid waste)!

Ingredients - cream cheese layer
200g full fat cream cheese, at room temperature
50g caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
40g desiccated coconut
1 tablespoon matcha (green tea powder)

 - brownie layer
140g coconut oil
140g 70% plain chocolate
300g  light muscovado sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs plus one egg white
160g plain flour
3 tablespoons cocoa

Method
Line a 20cm (8") square baking tray, with baking parchment and pre-heat oven to 180C.
In a medium bowl, beat together all the ingredients for the cream cheese swirl, until smooth.
Put the coconut oil and chocolate into a large bowl, and melt together over a pan of simmering water. Remove from the heat and add the sugar and vanilla, stirring until well mixed and smooth.
Beat in the whole eggs and the egg white, one at a time.
Sift in the flour and cocoa and fold in.

Spread 3/4 of the brownie batter into the prepared tin, then top with the cream cheese mixture, which should spread almost to the edges of the tin. Put blobs (7-9) of the remaining brownie batter over the surface, then use the end of a teaspoon, or something similar to swirl the batter into the cream cheese layer below.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until an inserted probe comes out with just a few damp crumbs sticking to it. Cool in the tin, then cut into 16 pieces.

I think these brownies were a great success; they looked attractive, without the green colour being too lurid and off-putting, and the sweet coconut and cream cheese balanced out the sometimes bitter edge of the matcha flavour well. The brownies were dense and fudgy, with a slight taste of coconut from the oil.

We Should Cocoa (rules here) is a chocolate baking challenge started by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog. She shares her hosting duties with other chocolate-loving bloggers, and this month has handed over to Katie, at Recipe for Perfection, who has chose brownies as the theme, and will post a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

Lemon and Green Tea Marble Cake

Cherry blossom in Takayama

Well, the holiday to Japan is over - all that remains are the memories and photos! Eating in restaurants was a challenge at times, although we looked for places which at least had an English menu, even if no-one spoke English. We coped for 10 days with only one meal which disappointed us. We ate tempura cooked freshly for us piece by piece, while we sat at the bar; mastered the art of ordering our food at a ticket machine; decided we both preferred soba noodles to udon; ate Hide beef in Takayama (the local equivalent of Wagyu beef) and amused endless staff and customers while we got accustomed to chopsticks again!

One of our favourite cold drinks in Japan, bought from vending machines which seem to stand on every street corner, was lemon tea. I'm not sure whether the tea was green tea or regular tea, but it inspired this lemon and green tea marble cake. This time I used enough green tea for the flavour, as well as the colour, to be noticeable in the cake.

Ingredients:
225g/8oz butter, at room temperature
225g/8oz caster sugar
80g/3oz ground almonds
175g/6oz SR flour
4 large eggs
milk, as required
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of lemon oil
2 tablespoons matcha (green tea powder)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 170C/150C fan/Gas 3.
Prepare a 18 or 20cm (7 or 8") diameter round cake tin. I prefer to use a non-stick springform tin, but still line the base with a circle of baking parchment.
Mix the flour and ground almonds together in a small bowl.
Cream the softened butter and sugar together until light and fluffy - an electric mixer is best for this, but it can be done by hand.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a teaspooon of the flour/almond mix, to prevent curdling. Then sieve the rest of the flour mix over the surface of the cake batter, tipping in any ground almonds which won't go through the sieve mesh. Fold this in until evenly mixed, adding enough milk as you do so to give a soft dropping consistency (about 3 tablespoons).
Divide the mixture in two, and stir the lemon zest and oil into one portion. Add the green tea powder to the other portion of cake batter, adding a little more milk if necessary, to keep the consistency the same as for the lemon flavoured portion.

Place alternate dessertspoons of the two mixtures into the cake tin, trying to get at least two layers, with green batter above lemon, and vice versa, on the upper layers, and gently easing the cake mix into place to avoid large gaps in the mixture. Tap the tin to settle the cake mix into any gaps that have been left, then use a skewer or a knife to swirl through the cake mix to marble the two mixes together.
Bake for 65-75 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean; cool in the tin for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

I used icing sugar and lemon juice to make a glacé icing which was drizzled decoratively over the cake. This was a delicious cake, with the lemon and green tea flavours complimenting each other well, and just enough green tea to give the distinctive bitter taste.

Green Tea Layer Cake with Yuzu Frosting

I'm trying very hard to bake small things at the moment, as there's only the two of us here now, and it wouldn't hurt either of us to eat a bit (or a lot, in my case!) less. One problem with small cakes, rather than individual cupcakes, or sliced traybakes, is to get them to look right, proportionally; I don't think I've succeeded very well with this cake - narrower and taller might have looked better.

I chose yuzu as the flavour for the frosting on this cake with this month's AlphaBakes challenge in mind; once that was decided it seemed a logical progression to add some matcha (green tea) powder to the cake batter and give the whole thing a Japanese feel. Yuzu is an Asian citrus fruit with a unique flavour - described as grapefruit crossed with mandarin - and it's juice is found for sale in this country in very small bottles (60mls), usually in the 'world foods' area of supermarkets. Lemon juice is probably the nearest substitute for flavour.

The cake was a standard all-in-one 2-egg sponge mixture, with two teaspoons of matcha powder added. I baked it in a straight sided tin which was 7" x 4" (a 1lb loaf tin is a similar size, but I didn't want sloping sides).

When the cake was cooled I filled and topped it with a buttercream flavoured with yuzu juice - I started with 80g softened butter, 180g sifted icing sugar and 45ml (3 tablespoons) of yuzu juice. I then added 4 rounded tablespoons more icing sugar to make the buttercream firmer. Finally, I sprinkled about 1/4 teaspoon of green lustre powder on the top, in lieu of anything better to decorate with!

The flavour of the buttercream - intensely citrusy - was the dominant flavour here. I'm not sure whether my matcha powder isn't very strongly flavoured, or I'm just not using enough of it, but the flavour just wasn't coming through. However, the yuzu flavour alone was enough to make this delicious.

AlphaBakes (rules here) is a baking challenge hosted alternately by Caroline at Caroline Makes and Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker. The idea is to bake something either whose name begins with the randomly chosen letter for the month, or one of the major flavouring ingredients begins with that letter. This month the letter chosen is Y and Ros is the host who will be doing a round up of entries at the end of the month.

Green Tea, Apricot and Cocoa Nib Biscuits

I've wanted to bake with Matcha Powder for years, but have always been put off by the price, particularly when mail order 'post and package' costs are added, as I've never (knowingly) been anywhere near a shop selling it. However, I was lucky enough to spot some while wandering around the Public Market on Granville Island in Vancouver BC, Canada. $13.95 (Canadian) seemed a reasonable price to pay for 50g (a bit less than £10), and the small tin could be easily fitted into our suitcase. Fitting in two 500ml tins of maple syrup bought from another vendor was a bit trickier, but I always try to under-pack to keep a little of the weight allowance for souvenirs. Hopefully, I'll soon get round to using some of the maple syrup in a baking recipe.

I had the idea that biscuits would showcase the green tea flavour better than a cake, and I was looking for recipe ideas when the AlphaBakes October Challenge (to use an ingredient beginning with C) popped up. One of the things I was considering adding as a flavouring ingredient was cocoa nibs, so everything seemed to be falling into place. After reading this beautifully photographed blog post, I decided to add some finely chopped dried apricots too.

The recipe I used gives a similar result to shortbread recipes, but the addition of an egg yolk makes the dough easier to handle, and more suitable for cut-out biscuits, as the dough can be rolled out more easily and doesn't spread while baking.

Ingredients
300g plain flour
100g caster sugar
50g ground almonds
225g unsalted butter, cubed, a little above fridge temperature
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons Matcha (green tea powder)
60g dried apricots, chopped finely
40g cocoa nibs

Method
Put the flour, sugar and butter into a bowl and rub in the butter as if making pastry. Stir in the green tea, apricots and cocoa nibs. Mix in the egg yolk with a table knife, then use hands to gather the dough into a ball and knead lightly until smooth. A food processor can be used to make the dough if preferred.

Roll out portions of the dough to about 0.5cm thick, cut into 2.5cm circles with a plain cookie cutter. Knead trimmings together and re-roll. Place the biscuits on baking sheets lined with parchment and bake at 180C for 12-15 minutes until just beginning to colour.

Cool on the baking tray for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. I made 26 cookies from this amount of dough.

I considered decorating the biscuits with a drizzle of glacé icing, but we dived in to start eating them before I had the chance to do so, and the idea just went away somehow!

The biscuits were a little crumblier than those usually produced by this recipe, so perhaps the green tea powder absorbs a lot of liquid. The apricots and cocoa nibs added contrasting chewy and crunchy textures, but all the flavours were very subtle. A little more green tea would not have gone amiss, but was unsure of how strong the flavour would be, so used it cautiously this first time. I'm not sure a deeper green colour would have been very attractive, either!

AlphaBakes (rules here) is a challenge based on a randomly chosen letter of the alphabet. The dish made must feature something beginning with that letter as one of the main ingredients or part of the name. It is hosted jointly by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes. Ros is the host this month, with the letter C, and as usual will post a round-up of entries at the end of the month.