I don’t actually celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but I thought these cupcakes fit in perfectly with the theme. One of my favourite new baking ingredients is green tea powder. The very first time I had a green tea flavoured anything was green tea ice cream in Australia. The flavour was sweet with a light bitterness, and deliciously creamy. In South Africa, you can find green tea ice cream at various Japanese restaurants and from Sinful Ice-Cream Emporium.
Green tea powder, also known as matcha powder, is ground green tea and is used as a cooking ingredient with many health properities. Green tea powder benefits include fat burning, energy boosting from the various vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids. I’ve seen matcha powder in smoothies, jello, cake, cupcakes, chocolate, pancakes, and with salt and poached eggs.
This recipe is a basic cupcake recipe, using green tea powder in both the cake and the buttercream icing.
Makes 10 cupcakes
Ingredients:
Cupcakes
- 150g of butter (melted)
- 200g of plain flour
- 3 tablespoon of green tea/matcha powder
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 1/2 cup of milk
- 1 tsp of vanilla extracts
- 1 pinch of salt
- 100g of castor sugar
- 3 egg white
- 150g butter, room temperature
- 2 Tbsps cream
- 1 Tbsp matcha powder
- 400g castor/icing sugar, sifted
- 1 vanilla pod
Method:
Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius
- Grease the cupcake tray/s, I used silicone cupcake holders.
- In one large bowl, mix the egg yolks, milk and melted butter together, then sift the flour, green tea powder and salt in, while mixing, until it becomes a smooth creamy paste.
- In a separate bowl, mix the castor sugar, egg whites and vanilla extracts until it becomes white from all the bubbles.
- Add the egg white mixture into the green tea mixture and mix.
- Pour the mixture into the cupcake tray, filling 3/4 of the way.
- Bake for 20 – 25 minutes.
Icing
- Sift the castor sugar and green tea into a bowl with the softened butter.
- Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod into the bowl.
- Beat the two items together until light and fluffy.
- Prep it into a piping bag and refrigerate for 5 minutes.
