Matcha Buttercream

I am addicted to green tea in my sweets, ice cream to soft caramel candies. It goes back to 1997, Japan where I had at least one package of these green tea candies daily, thanks to a young monk who was a regular at the temple I was staying. My Japanese wasn't good enough to say anything close to "Please don't spoil me this much, we don't have these back home!", instead I kept saying "Arigato gozaitmasu (thank you very much)". As expected, years gone by without them. After coming to San Francisco, I re-discovered the same flavor with the green tea mochi ice creams from Trader's Joes. I even found the candies on Clement Street, at that amazing Crepe place across the street from the infamous Burma Super Star.

Note to self and the v-ball crew: We should eat there pretty soon and I need to get some more of those candies and post pictures:)

So, all this green tea background was actually the warm-up for the real deal among the pastry world: Matcha. It is the green tea leaves in powder form. A couple weeks ago, Cenk, my ex-roommame* who is back in Istanbul now, saw this amazing cake from Keiko and asked me to send some matcha for him. Of course I had to buy one for myself, too!

I started playing with it this weekend and came up with something simple but very tasty. Matcha Buttercream … Just mix a teaspoon of matcha with a cup of vanilla buttercream and there you have it….It blends wonderful with dark chocolate and luckily, I had some leftover chocolate cupcakes from the Plaid Party!

A quick tip: Do not try piping with ziploc or this happens and you will have to start over again...these metal tips work best with a pastry bag!

So, try it…I know green tea is not everyone's favorite and that's ok but seriously, it really looks very pretty and it tastes so good, you might even like the flavor!

Oh, before I forget, here is an extra tip: You can also use matcha powder in place of green food coloring and also dust sugar decorations; think leaves, trees or grapes....

Next up are Matcha Chocolate Pudding from 101 Cookbooks and the famous Green Tea Opera Cake from Keiko.

*Update: not only my ex-roommate but he is also my best friend in the whole world even though he left me all alone here and has no plans coming back any time soon:( Better?