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Green Tea Pound Cake
Oct. 2nd, 2011 10:27 amSo. It's kind of chilly in Michigan right now, even by my standards, and we haven't had the boiler inspected or the chimney swept quite yet. That means there are two avenues for heating the home-- running the oven, and running the dryer. So I baked the first cake of the season yesterday.
I used to love Trader Joe's Matcha Muffin Mix-- it made great muffins and even better waffles. But, as with many good things out of Trader Joe's, they scrapped it. That left me looking for ways to make green tea-flavored baked goods that did not involve the use of precious and expensive matcha powder. So I invested in a bottle of this. It's kind of gross for drinking, and I don't even know if they make it any more (the official site is down), but I figured it would work in a cake. This was several years ago; I procrastinate, OK?
I made my standard liqueur-infused pound cake recipe out of the Fannie Farmer Baking Book. It's pretty basic-- two cups regular flour, 1 2/3 cups sugar, five eggs, one cup butter, half a teaspoon salt, one quarter-cup milk, one-quarter cup booze. I usually make this with a harsh black raspberry liqueur (NOT Chambord) that makes for a very nice, faintly purple cake. The Zen liqueur imparted a very faint green tinge-- much less so than, say, pandan-flavored baked goods. I poured the batter into my beloved Nordicware Bavarian Bundt pan[*], and one hour later I had delicious cake cooling on my rack.
It's a really good, really reliable recipe for a dense, moist (not gooey!) cake that can be easily sliced, transports well, and works alone or with a variety of spreads (cream, jam, butters). I think powdered-sugar glazes are vile and do not use them on my cakes. The tea flavor in this particular version is subtle but present-- non-tea lovers would just enjoy it as a cake. I was pleased.
I still need to pick up some pandan extract; I failed at this in my jaunt to California in May.
* The pan matters. Investing in a good, heavy, solid baking pan instead of the knockoff crap you get at ABC Warehouse is critical and I learned this lesson the hard way back when I was short on spending money.
I used to love Trader Joe's Matcha Muffin Mix-- it made great muffins and even better waffles. But, as with many good things out of Trader Joe's, they scrapped it. That left me looking for ways to make green tea-flavored baked goods that did not involve the use of precious and expensive matcha powder. So I invested in a bottle of this. It's kind of gross for drinking, and I don't even know if they make it any more (the official site is down), but I figured it would work in a cake. This was several years ago; I procrastinate, OK?
I made my standard liqueur-infused pound cake recipe out of the Fannie Farmer Baking Book. It's pretty basic-- two cups regular flour, 1 2/3 cups sugar, five eggs, one cup butter, half a teaspoon salt, one quarter-cup milk, one-quarter cup booze. I usually make this with a harsh black raspberry liqueur (NOT Chambord) that makes for a very nice, faintly purple cake. The Zen liqueur imparted a very faint green tinge-- much less so than, say, pandan-flavored baked goods. I poured the batter into my beloved Nordicware Bavarian Bundt pan[*], and one hour later I had delicious cake cooling on my rack.
It's a really good, really reliable recipe for a dense, moist (not gooey!) cake that can be easily sliced, transports well, and works alone or with a variety of spreads (cream, jam, butters). I think powdered-sugar glazes are vile and do not use them on my cakes. The tea flavor in this particular version is subtle but present-- non-tea lovers would just enjoy it as a cake. I was pleased.
I still need to pick up some pandan extract; I failed at this in my jaunt to California in May.
* The pan matters. Investing in a good, heavy, solid baking pan instead of the knockoff crap you get at ABC Warehouse is critical and I learned this lesson the hard way back when I was short on spending money.
