Mug Cakes and Cookies

So what’s all the rage about matcha? It’s becoming more and more popular and it’s heading to South Africa. There are so many uses for matcha, especially in the baking industry – the recipes that are surfacing are incredible! – So we thought we’d give one a try each Monday morning with and post the recipe, directions and results in our #MatchaMonday blog.

Scarlett, our adorable 5 year old mascot, also has a lot to say about matcha, therefore featuring for each recipe made, in this and future blogs, will be a "Scarlett Says" snippet so you can see her honest opinion of what she thinks.

We started off small and easy with the following recipe:

MATCHA GREEN TEA MUG CAKE

Ingredients:

• 4 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1 tsp matcha powder
  1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp granulated white sugar (add more if you prefer a sweeter dessert)
• 3 tbsp nonfat milk (we used full cream)
  1/2 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Add all ingredients into an oversized microwave-safe mug.
2. Mix with a small whisk until batter is smooth and uniform in colour.
3. Microwave for 1 minute. Let cake cool for a few minutes and then eat.

The end result was not quite what we’d hoped it to be, mainly due to faults of our own. Here’s why:

The recipe required that we use vegetable oil, however, we didn’t have any and decided to use sesame oil instead – big mistake. The smell and taste of the sesame oil permeated through all the batter, even after adding vanilla essence to try cover it up.

We also had to add extra milk as the batter was extremely dry and hard to mix.

Due to the above mentioned, the cake was rather dry and stodgy. If only it had tasted as good as it looked!

Scarlett Says:

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“It’s perfect!” and gave a thumbs-up.

We also tried another recipe:

SINGLE SERVING MICROWAVE MATCHA GREEN TEA COOKIE

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 3 tbsp all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp granulated white sugar
• 1 tbsp whisked egg
  1/4 tsp premium grade matcha powder (The higher the quality, the better the green colour.)

Directions:

1. Whisk all ingredients into a small bowl until smooth batter forms. Line a large round microwave-safe plate with parchment paper. Using a small spatula, scoop out batter into middle of the plate. The batter will be quite wet but you should be able to pour the cookie batter so that it forms a round disk, like a cookie shape or a thick pancake. Smooth surface with spatula if needed.
2. Cook in microwave for about 50 seconds. Careful not to cook longer, as it will make cookie hard in the centre. Let cookie cool a few minutes before eating.

This one also turned out to be quite a flop. We quadrupled the recipe as it required only one tablespoon of egg, and why let the rest of the egg go waste when you can make more cookies instead! However, after cooking them for the allotted amount of time, they still looked rather raw and tasted a little odd. They did harden a little after being left to cool down though. And on that note, once hardened they tasted fairly good.

Scarlett Says:

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"It’s a bit perfect and a bit not perfect."

Don’t fear about trying out these recipes yourselves though (you’ll probably do a better job), this was our first time experimenting with matcha recipes, so hopefully the outcome will be better next time – you know what they say: practice makes perfect!

Recipe credit: www.kirbiecravings.com