Matcha Cupcake

b's mini cupcakes
photo courtesy of Andrew Soetiono

In all honesty, I'm not really a cupcake kind of girl. I don't deny that they are cute and pretty, but I just don't enjoy making them as much as I do making cakes. I don't mind trying recipes because I know my friends will be more than happy to devour them for me. There's another thing to be thankful for. Without them, I wouldn't be able to experiment as much. Thank you dear friends for volunteering to be my guinea pigs. XOXO

Green tea has sparked my curiosity. I'm a big fan of a cup of green tea, so I would like to be able to make green-tea flavoured desserts. Not everyone will like it, because I think the taste of green tea is an acquired taste. You need to get used to it before you can enjoy eating green-tea flavoured desserts. There are few more that I want to try making.

I recently bought Matcha (powdered Japanese green tea) and this is my first trial at making Matcha Cupcake. I love it! :) My friends also loved it. Even Julie, who doesn't like green tea-flavoured dessert (except for Il Dolce Fredo's green tea gelato), loved it much and said she can eat a million more.

Ria said, "It taste.....UTTERLY FANTASTIC & UNBELIVEABLY GOOD ! ! ! The green tea topping at the top compliments the green tea cupcake in the bottom & vice versa... You can eat them separately, but combining both elements will give you a COMPLETE satisfactory...It's T H E B E S T Matcha Cupcakes I have ever tasted ! ! ! ! :))"

It is my personal favourite so far because the cake is very fluffy and moist. I feel that this is how cupcakes should be. The combination of the icing and the cake is just perfect, delicate, right level of sweetness, and not overpowering. It passed the quality control, and has been added to my bakingbee menu.

Matcha is powdered Japanese green t made from shade-grown tea leaves also used to make gyokuro, unlike other forms of powdered tea, such as powdered sencha.

The preparation of matcha starts several weeks before harvest, when the tea bushes are covered to prevent direct sunlight. This slows down growth, turns the leaves a darker shade of green and causes the production of amino acids that make the resulting tea sweeter.

Only the finest tea buds are hand picked. After harvesting, if the leaves are rolled out before drying as usual, the result will be gyokuro (jewel dew) tea. However, if the leaves are laid out flat to dry, they will crumble somewhat and become known as tencha (碾茶). Tencha can then be de-veined, de-stemmed, and stone ground to the fine, bright green, talc-like powder known as matcha. It can take up to one hour to grind 30 grams of matcha.

Note that only ground tencha qualifies as matcha, and other powdered teas are known as konacha (粉茶, lit. "powder tea").

The flavour of matcha is dominated by its amino acids. The highest grades of matcha have more intense sweetness and deeper flavour than the standard or coarser grades of tea harvested later in the year (Wikipedia).

Matcha Cupcakes

Awesome weekend getaway with special friends, successful recipe trials, and pretty photographs of my babies make me one very happy girl! :)

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