Chocolate Matcha Cupcakes

Blame it on the heat, I find it hard to sit still in front of the laptop to write you a coherent post about the chocolate matcha cupcakes I made last week.

30 minutes has passed and I am struck after the first sentence. I think I am not going to try too hard for now. Let us just get straight to the cupcakes, shall we?

The chocolate cake base is from my favorite author Alice Medrich's book- Chocolate and The Art of Low Fat Desserts . The batter doesn't rise much, but it is moist and chocolatey. Everything you can hope for in a chocolate cake. Most importantly no one can tell that it's low fat.

The matcha cream cheese frosting, is adopted from chockylit. I use the Philly 1/3 Less Fat Neufchtel to cut down on the fat content, although I believe one could substitute the fat free cream cheese here with no problem. My tasters love the chocolate cake, but find the frosting slightly too sweet for their tastes. That can be easily adjusted by reducing the amount of confectioner's sugar used. Because I am aiming for a deep matcha flavor, I used a heaping 2 tablespoons of matcha powder in the frosting. You can certainly taste and adjust the amount according to your liking.

Tip: If you are looking for matcha powder, try the Asian grocery stores. They are usually shelved with the rest of the tea products. I paid between $4.99-$6.99 for the 1.1 oz tin. Note that matcha powder is different from green tea powder, which the color and flavor is not as intense as the former.

When I couldn't find an Asian grocery store that stock matcha powder in St Louis, I bought mine at Teavana for $16.00!Extortion, I know.

Chocolate Matcha Cupcakes
adapted from Alice Medrich's "Chocolate and The Art of Low Fat Desserts" and here

cupcakes:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted all purpose flour (4.5 oz)
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened dutch processed cocoa powder
scant 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
scant 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 tablespoon instant espresso or coffee powder dissolve in 1.5 tablespoon of hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoon buttermilk,at room temperature
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
Matcha Cream cheese frosting:
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 ounces or 1/2 package of Neuftachel 1/3 less fat Philedephia cream cheese
1.5 cups confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons matcha powder

Position the rack in the lower third of the oven and prehear ro 350F. Line the muffin pan with paper liners.

Combine and sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Set aside. Whisk the whole egg and eggwhites in a small bowl and set aside. Combine the vanilla, espresso mixture and buttermilk in another small bowl, set aside.

Cut the butter into chunks and place in the electric mixer bowl. Beat to softenend, about 1 minutes. Add the sugar gradually, beating constantly for about 3 minutes, until the color of the butter turns pale. Dribble the egg mixture gradually, beating at high speed for 2-3 minutes. On low speed, add in a third of the flour mixture. On medium speed, dribble in half of the buttermilk mixture, scrapping the bowl when necessary. On low speed, add in a third of the flour, followed by the rest of the buttermilk mixture. Beat in the remaining flour until well combined. The batter may look slightly cuddled.

Scoop the batter into muffin cups and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out barely clean. Cool cake on a rack.

To make matcha cream cheese frosting:
Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed until creamy.

Sift 1.5 cups of confectioners' sugar and 1 tablespoon of matcha powder into the butter/cream cheese mixture and beat to combine.

Taste and add more matcha if desired. I like the matcha flavor, so I used 2 tablespoons in total.

Other matcha recipes on Fresh From The Oven:
Chocolate Matcha Loaf Cake
Matcha Cookies
Chocolate Matcha Brownies
Mini Matcha Cheese Tarts

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Chocolate Matcha Loaf Cake

Has Spring arrived in your neck of the woods yet? This morning when I looked out from the window, there's still no sign of its arrival yet. I feel cheated when seeing my contacts on Flickr posted their Spring inspired photos, of flowers blooming and people smiling, on a presumably happy Spring day.

Old man winter seems to overstay his welcome here. And I am grumpy, with the view of depressingly barren trees, and the prospect of hunting an apartment which we can call home in Atlanta. We are moving in 2 weeks time, but not a single detail of the move has been finalized.

For a complete lack of wit, allow me to leave you with this chocolate matcha loaf I made, using my favorite low fat recipe from Alice Medrich, which never fails to make me feel better and comforted after a slice.

I am going out for a walk now, hoping to find the slightest hint of Spring's arrival.

For recipe, see here.

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Where have I been?

hey friends, I am so sorry to leave you without a word for such a long time. I had shamelessly tagged OCT along on his interview trip to Seattle. And since we made a trip there, we decided to spend a couple more days in that wonderful city. You know, sipping lattes and eating as much as we could, especially croissant, which we are seriously deprived of, here in St Louis. Well I hope I would plucker up enough courage to tackle that recipe when the weather gets cooler. Anyone wants to do this together? It's one of my to do list, along with losing weights. What an irony. ha!

So, that explained part of the reason of my absense and lack of entry. Another part was because I was down with flu. I call it the full package covering each and every spectrum of flu symptoms. Certainly that includes fever, sore throat, runny nose, coughing and lethargy. I spent a week having a good time in Seattle and another week a dreadful time, mostly on bed. And with this, I hope you will forgive me for not being able to visit and leave comments on your blogs and response promptly on the comments you left here.

Although I have not fully recovered, I am happy to inform that I am 90% there. And by Wednesday, I expect a full recovery. I HAVE to. Because I am tagging along for ANOTHER interview trip. This time, we are going to Atlanta. Even though it's a short trip. Hopefully we get to see, or rather, EAT as many yummy local cuisine as possible.

But I digress. The purpose of this post is to share with you another variation of my favorite low fat marble cake. I marbled two of my favorite ingredients: matcha and cocoa to produce these green and brown cupcakes. The matcha powder that I used was potent, so a teaspoon for a cup of batter (see recipe below) produced my desired color and taste. It has a clean green tea flavor without overpowering, in perfect harmony with its chocolate marbled half.

I have bought another 2 tiny tins of matcha powder from Seattle, enough to experiment with more ideas I have in mind!

Chocolate Matcha Marble Cake/Cupcake


2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee powder
1/3 cup dutch-process cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 whole egg
1 egg white
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup low fat yogurt
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1.5 teaspoons matcha powder

Have all ingredients at room temp. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the lower third of the oven. Spray 8-10 cup tube pan with cooking spray.

Use a whisk to combine four, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sift together. Set aside. In a small bowl combine the espresso powder, cocoa and 1/3 cup of the sugar with 1/4 cup of water. Whisk until smooth. Set aside. In another small bowl, whisk whole egg with egg white. Set aside.

Cut the butter into pieces and place in an electric mixing bowl. Beat for 1 minute to soften. Gradually add remaining 1 cup of sugar and beat at high speed for about 3 minutes. Dribble eggs in slowly, about 1 T at a time, beating constantly for about 2 minutes. On low speed, beat in a third of the flour mixture. On medium-high speed, beat in half of the yogurt. On low speed, beat in half of the remaining flour. On high speed, beat in the rest of the yogurt and the vanilla. On low speed, beat in the remaining flour.

Measure out 1 1/2 cups of yogurt batter and mix into the cocoa mixture. Set aside. Add matcha powder to the rest of the yogurt batter in the mixing bowl.

Use a large spoon to fill the bottom of the pan with about three quarters of the green batter placed in dollops. Cover the green batter with dollops of chocolate batter. Top the chocolate batter with small dollops of green batter spaced so that the chocolate batter shows through. Use a table knife to marble the batters together with a circular or zigzag motion; be careful not to blend them too much.

For cupcakes, scoop a heaping tablespoon of either green or brown batter into each paper liner, and cover it with the alternate batter. Marbling the batter with a knife is optional. If you do not marble the batter, you will get a two tone cake instead of a marble cake. Which I think looks equally elegant and appealing.

Bake for 45-50 minutes for cake, (20-25 minutes for cupcakes) or until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in comes out clean.

Cool for 10-15 minutes on a rack. Unmold the cake. Cool completely before serving or storing.

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Matcha Again?!

Hmmm... Yeah. Sorry, I am really obsessed with Matcha lately. I am sure you will see more Matcha related recipes on my blog until I finally finish using my tiny tin of Matcha powder. I will try to spread them out over the weeks, so Green will not be the only color you see in this blog.As you may recall,I have blogged about the Matcha Brownie and mini matcha cheese tarts here not too long ago. But the first recipe I tried after I acquired the Matcha powder was indeed these Matcha Cookies, which Kelli from Lovescool had so kindly shared on her blog.

Now you probably have seen it on Fanny, Veronica,Mae and some other beautiful blogs before(sorry I am sure I have seen a lot more bloggers' entries on this sweet but I can't remember where!), and I don't have to sound like a broken record telling you just how amazing these cookies are. I simply love its melt in your mouth texture and distinct matcha flavor. Eating the cookie is almost like drinking the matcha tea itself. However, if Matcha is not your cup of tea, then maybe you would find it a bit grassy.OCT for one, finds the cookies too "green/grassy". I nodded to his comment, and secretly happy that I could have the cookies all to myself! Well, I guess we can say:"one man's meat is another man's poison?" Like how I adore chocolate of high cocoa percentage, but OCT finds it too bitter.Just my 2 cents anyway.

But I am urging you, green tea lovers out there to give this a try, and remember: Don't waste it on your tea-hating friends. They may not enjoy it, so save the precious morsels for yourself!Like how I baked a batch, offered OCT a tiny bite and kept the rest all to myself!

In Kelli's version, she rolls the cookies in sugar. I followed the method in my first batch but decided to play around with the subsequent batch. Since I always have some sweet tart dough in the freezer, I defrosted some, rolled it thin and glued to the Matcha cookie dough.

After the dough firmed up, the dough was sliced and baked in the oven. I think I like the second version better. The outer ring of sweet tart dough added a nice buttery flavor to the cookies and I prefer the cookies without the crunch from granulated sugar.

Thank you Kelli, for your generosity in sharing your award winning Matcha Cookies recipe! Your recipe nudged me to get my first tin of Matcha powder, and ignited my obsession with Matcha ever since.

Have you made these cookies yet?

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