My Favorite Recipes Collection: Green Tea Chocolate Mini Bundt Cake with Chocolate cream filling

Monday, August 31, 2015

Green Tea Chocolate Mini Bundt Cake with Chocolate cream filling

Use of Matcha or green tea powder in baking and in other desserts always intrigued me and I always wanted to try something with green tea powder. I finally did. I thought I will try this version of my familiar recipe first and then venture into making other desserts like ice cream, smoothies and drinks.
The pretty green color of this powdered green tea is so soothing to eyes and has a subtle but not overpowering flavor.
First let me tell you something about this powder, I found this information on Wikipedia.

Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea. It's special in two aspects of farming and processing: The green tea plants for matcha are shade-grown for about three weeks before harvest, and the stems and veins are removed in processing.

The traditional Japanese tea ceremony centers on the preparation, serving, and drinking of matcha. In modern times, matcha has also come to be used to flavor and dye foods such as mochi and soba noodles, green tea ice creams and a variety of wagashi (Japanese confectionery). The former is often referred to as ceremonial-grade matcha, meaning that the matcha powder is good enough for tea ceremony. The latter is referred to as culinary-grade matcha. However, there is no standard industry definition or requirements for either. Different matcha manufacturers might provide their own definitions.
Other uses of green tea powder:
It is used in castella, manju and monaka as a topping for kakigori; mixed with milk and sugar as a drink; and mixed with salt and used to flavor tempura in a mixture known as matcha-jio. It is also used as flavoring in many Western-style chocolates, candy and desserts, such as cakes and pastries (including swiss rolls and cheese cakes, cookies, pudding, mousse and frozen yogart and icecream. The Japanese snack Pocky has a matcha-flavoured version. Matcha may also be mixed into other forms of tea. For example, it is added to genmaicha to form what is called matcha-iri genmaicha (literally, roasted brown rice and green tea with added matcha).

The use of matcha in modern drinks has also spread to North American cafés, such as Starbucks which introduced "Green Tea Lattes" and other matcha-flavoured drinks after matcha became successful in their Japanese store locations. As in Japan, it has become integrated into lattes, iced drinks, milkshakes, and smoothies. A number of cafes have introduced lattes and iced drinks using matcha powder. It has also been incorporated into alcoholic beverages such as liqueurs and even matcha green tea beers.

Ingredients for cake:

1 box of yellow or white cake mix with pudding mix in it (I used yellow cake mix)

3 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup mayonnaise

3 cups (1.5 pint) or (.75 quarts) of melted ice cream I used cookie dough, you can use plain vanilla ice cream)

3 tablespoon of Matcha tea powder

1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips.

Ingredients for filling and icing:

6 oz of chocolate chip cookies

1/4 cup of milk

1/2 can of condensed milk

1 8 oz pack of cream cheese

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1/4 cup of powdered sugar if want to use instead of icing or any sugar glaze or fudge or chocolate topping.

Method to make the batter:

* Beat eggs, oil together.
* Add sour cream, mayo and melted ice cream, * and mix it, add 2 table spoon of green tea powder.
* Add cake mix and beat it in mixture adding remaining green tea powder.
* Fold it the mini chocolate chips and set aside.

Method to make the filling and icing:
* Melt 6 oz of chocolate chip morsels with milk in a microwave safe glass bowl, stirring every min until completely melted.
* Mix well until smooth.
* Add cream cheese, vanilla and condensed milk
* Mix well wooden spatula until smooth

* Preheat oven at 350 F
* Prepare mini Bundt cake pans by spraying with Pam.
* I used silicone Bundt cake which I think are the best.
* Pour the cake batter with table spoon around in to each mini Bundt pan.
* Put the filling in center of each bundt pan around the tube.
* I must admit, mine came out little messy.
* Save the remaining filling for icing.
* Bake the Bundt cakes at 350 for 45 min to 50 min until tooth pic comes out clean.
* Let the cakes cool completely.

* Invert the cake pans and carefully take out the Bundt cakes.
* You can either ice them with remaining filling or sprinkle powder sugar of them.
* You may also make a glaze (which I did not have time to make) and pour over it.

* You can get creative with plating and serving.
* May fill the well of bundt cake with warm fudge and with chocolate filling may give a look of green volcano with melted chocolate lava.
* May serve it with ice cream.
* May add chopped Pistachio nuts in the batter along with chocolate chip for extra crunch.