green tea & white chocolate cake

I remember having my first Green Tea & White Chocolate muffin on a trip to Japan. It was at the notorious Dean & Deluca - an awesome patisserie/bakery/deli/food produce store (arguably second to none). If you haven't had the combo of green tea and white chocolate before, I urge you to try because it was a combo that wow-ed me over the first time I had it (it's a match made in heaven! The bitterness of the green tea balances with the sweetness of white chocolate) and well, it did encourage me to come up with my own recipe for them. Here's the link to the recipe that I came up with (back in the good old days when we were all on Xanga!).

It's been a good while since I've made anything with green tea and white chocolate. For awhile, I was hooked on green tea and pretty much made everything green tea - tarts, scones, steamed cakes (you can find these recipes/pics on my Xanga blog). But then I'm talking about a couple of years ago because when I pulled out this recipe for green tea & white chocolate cake, I noticed that my tub of matcha powder had expired back in 2007 (Oops!). Lucky I had the stash that one of my friends brought back for me on his trip to Japan (Thanks A!)

This recipe is from Llona Chovancova's 'Cakes and Loaves'; I've flipped through this book numerous times and am absolutely in love with it. It's got a great combination of sweet and savoury recipes, stunning photography and the recipes are very easy to follow. The goods that come out of the oven speak for themselves!

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Butter and flour a cake pan (use a small loaf pan like the one in the pic below).

Melt 150g butter in the microwave and set aside. Melt 75g white chocolate in the microwave and set aside. Beat together 3 eggs and 175g sugar in a large mixing bowl until light, fluffy, and doubled in volume.

 Gradually add 100g flour, 75g ground almonds, melted butter and a pinch of salt. Gently fold in 1/2 tbsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda.

Divide the batter into 2 equal portions. Fold 3tsp green tea into one portion (recommend you add a little bit more than this for more flavour), and fold the white chocolate into the other.

Transfer to the prepared pan, pouring in the batters alternatively.

Bake for about 40 minutes (check with skewer to see if cooked).

Let cool in the pan slightly before turning out.

Cake innards!

This cake is extremely moist and when eaten slightly warm out of the oven, you'll find that the outer is slightly crunchy and sweet from the white chocolate. I took a slice in to work this morning and it was perfect without the need to reheat. Mum's also a big fan of this one (although she'd prefer that I put a bit more matcha powder for extra flavour). Sometimes I think I'm buying the wrong matcha powder because I always never get the amount of flavour I want - does anyone else have the same problem?

Oh, and the other reason why mum and I both love this cake? It's the perfect size for the amount of people I have at home eating it. After last night, we were already through half the loaf. I do actually feel a bit guilty because with the amount of baking I'm doing at the moment, some of it is having to get binned (we just can't eat it all) so it works out well that this recipe (and all the recipes in the book) make much smaller cakes/loaves than what you usually expect.