This matcha cake has a very spongy and soft texture with red bean paste and whipped cream frosting. It has a plain appearance yet a wonderful flavor. The mouthfeel is bittersweet yet delightful. Just like life itself.
Turning Thirty
It was my birthday last Friday. It was a big day for me, because I was turning 3X. I didn’t shout out loud “God, why did you do this to me!?” But I did feel a bit sad. There is a saying, attributed to Confucius, in Chinese – “At thirty, a man can stand” – that is to say, “be successful and independent at thirty”. It also includes the meaning that the life philosophy, worldview, and personality of a man should be mature and established when turning thirty. I could not help but ask myself, have I achieved this yet? My instinctive answer is, I can’t say for sure. Negative Thoughts Well, that’s are all I can think of so far. I’m always trying to avoid negative thoughts, but sometimes those thoughts shatter my self-esteem.
But Think of the Positive After all, did I achieve what I should have at 30? After thinking carefully, the answer is still “I can’t say for sure”. There are so many ways to define success, yet I haven’t achieved any of them. However, I’m trying very hard to learn and progress everyday. Through blogging, I learned a very important lesson. There is nothing you can do to achieve success overnight. Not even over a year or two. But if you keep accumulating progress, you will eventually get somewhere.
About the Cake
Back to the topic of cooking. I’m very old fashioned when it comes to celebration. Whenever there’s something to celebrate, I think about baking a cake. However, I’m not a baker (read: very bad at baking). In the end, every celebration ends up with some sort of misery in the kitchen. This time was no exception. My boyfriend came from the US to visit me 2 weeks ago. After some discussion, We decided to bake a green tea cake for my birthday. The baking process went well, but I failed at frosting in the end. While I was imagining a cute and tall matcha cake, it turned out plain and ugly. But fortunately, the cake tasted wonderful! I’m still surprised at the recipe and its result. The recipe doesn’t call for baking powder, baking soda or yeast. It only contains very small amount of flour and sugar. However it resulted in a very soft, spongy and fluffy cake. The kind that you could easily crush when slicing, even with a very sharp knife. The frosting is very creamy. It contains a dash of matcha, but no sugar. Through the bitterness of the matcha powder, you can actually taste the sweetness of the cream itself. I added two layers of red bean paste in the cake to balance the bitter flavor and it worked out very well. The sweetness of the cake is very much on the Asian end of the spectrum. Depending on your perspective of how a dessert should taste, this cake might not seem sweet enough. But if you like matcha flavor, definitely try out the recipe. It has a great texture, similar to that of a cake from a Japanese bakery. This recipe is adapted from the Green Tea Cake by Kitchen Tigress.
The nutrition facts are calculated based on 1 of the 6 servings generated by this recipe.
