It’s my lovely husband’s Birthday and I made this little cupcakes with all his favourite ingredients, japanese tea matcha, chestnuts and chocolate.

We had them and they taste sooo nice!

A word about matcha tea: first of all, it’s very expensive, but you only use a little, and if you have never tried it before…well, you should! it has a fresh “grassy” taste, so it might feel weird if you are completely new to the world of real green teas.

Matcha is sold in little tins and it’s a powder, that you prepare by whisking with a special bamboo whisk in a cup.

Look it up on wikipedia

So, my suggestion is to use less matcha powder if you’re not too sure about it.

Matcha and chestnut cupcakes

INGREDIENTS for 16-17 cupcakes

300 gr of white flour (the Italian 00 if you can)

150 gr of butter, melted and cooled down

150 gr of caster sugar

3 eggs, white separated and whisked

a small glass of milk (you probably won’t need the whole glass)

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 to 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of matcha

a can of cooked and peeled chestnuts

some chocolate hearts (well, you don’t have to, but they look nice)

Prepare the baking trays by lining them with muffin cases.

Put the sugar in a bowl, add the egg yolks and mix well until it’s pale and creamy.

Add the melted  butter, mix and start adding the flour little by little, when it gets hard add some milk. Keep adding flour and milk until you have finished the flour (don’t worry if you still have milk left), but leave the mix a little bit stiff, otherwise it might get too runny when you add the egg whites.

Add the matcha tea (sifting it) and the baking powder.

Turn the oven on to 180 degrees.

Whisk the egg whites to very stiff peaks, then fold them in the flour mixture, take your time but do it carefully!

Have your chestnuts at hand.

Put about 1 tablespoon of mix in each case and put one chestnut in, then cover with more mix until 3 quarters full.

Bake in the oven until risen and golden on the bottom, they will slightly sink when they’re out, test for doneness with a cocktail stick (if it comes out clean they’re ready).

Cool on a rack and decorate with whatever you like! I think it’s worth decorating these cakes because of their weird colour, they look too strange with no decorations…still delicious, though.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 12:13 and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.