Two easy green tea dessert recipes, so you can have your tea and eat it too
- Susan Jung shows how to make a marble cake and financiers in the hope of making life that little bit sweeter
It is easy to adapt a favourite dessert recipe to a green tea version because the powdered tea is both a colouring and a flavouring. Some recipes call for “green tea for baking”. Ignore that – that type of tea is usually a faded green and will give the final product neither a good colour nor a pleasant flavour. While you don’t need to use expensive, tea-ceremony-standard green tea, use the best powdered version you are willing to buy.
Green tea and black sesame marble cake
The black sesame paste used for this recipe shouldn’t be too sweet or oily; it should be thick but spoonable, and without a layer of oil floating on top.
The process of dividing the cake batter into two portions, then taking a smaller amount out of each to mix in the black sesame paste and green tea powder separately before adding them back into the main mixture sounds convoluted, but it is necessary. If you were to add the green tea and black sesame straight into the two main portions of the batter, you would risk overmixing them.
225 grams unsalted butter, slightly softened
200 grams granulated sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
2 large eggs, at room temperature
230 grams plain (all-purpose) flour
235 grams sour cream, at room temperature
3-4 tsp green tea powder
60 grams black sesame paste
1 Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Prepare one or two loaf tins (I use one with a capacity of 1.3 litres, and another that holds 1.8 litres) by spraying them with tin coating, then lining with baking paper, leaving some overhang. Use a small sieve to sift the green tea powder.
2 Put the butter, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a mixing bowl and beat until fluffy and pale yellow. Mix in one egg and when it has been fully incorporated, stir in half the flour. Scrape the mixing bowl and beaters with a rubber spatula, then mix in the second egg and the remaining flour the same way. Again, scrape the bowl and beaters, then stir in the sour cream but do not overmix.
