Indonesians taught me: 末茶糖霜 Green Tea Matcha Frosting



I have a large stack of tea of my dresser which proves just how much Chinese love tea. No not me. Chinese. Every time I visit my professors I am offered a cup of 茶 cha, and when I compliment them on the clean and flavorful taste, I'm blessed with a couple packets or boxes. It took me a while, but I finally realized that I should just shut up and drink the tea.

Truth is I am more of a 'bush girl'. My grand-aunt always knew the right herbs to brew for ailments or just simply breakfast. Big thyme, Sage, Lemon-grass and those others that shall remain nameless but effective. Yes, I forgot their names. Blame the language hurdles. But by the time I moved here, I got so passionate about drinking hot water that I slowly lost the passion for tea. So when my friend asked me for a birthday cake with green tea flavor as the only requirement, I was like


What was green tea doing in baking goods? When did this happen? Sure enough google confirmed this. A closer look at that green-coloured cake in the local bakery proved the theory of selective hearing or in this case, selective sight. I was obviously out of my depth here. So I enlisted some help from my Indonesians sisters, connoisseurs of all these cute, sweet, and turning everything into a party and came up with this.




Green Tea Matcha Frosting


1 1/2-2 cups icing sugar
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
5 tsp Green Tea Matcha powder *
2 tbsp milk

* So the basis of a buttercream frosting is butter and sugar proportions usually  of 1:4. These have to be adjusted when you add green tea powder. Since the flavor of my powder wasn't as strong as expected, more matcha meant more butter. It may not be the same it your case so be open to experimenting.

1. Blend softened butter and icing sugar until smooth. Mix in vanilla.

2. Add Matcha powder teaspoon by teaspoon until you taste the perfect balance of vanilla and green tea.

3. Slowly add milk until you achieve your desired consistency


+ The cake was a vanilla box cake which I coloured red and white trying to mimic the Indonesian flag. Big fail. The fact that the oven only heated at the bottom and I didn't realized until four cakes later didn't faze me either. I am so over naughty ovens and throwing kitchen tantrums. It may not look like my perfect chocolate cake but it tasted heavenly and that is no exaggeration. The cute minions were also specially requested. This will hopefully be my last time manipulating fondant without tools #whosaidyouneedagymforarmday #mytonedarmsproveotherwise #flotuslookout




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