Matcha Castella Cake

They recommend that you let the cake sit in saran wrap for several hours before eating. So one of my daughters made this sign...she got the idea of "sending you to the coal bin" from watching the Netflix show "The Willoughby's".

Girls eating the cake for breakfast while reading the morning wall street journal.

Castella is a Japanese fluffy cake which gets its height by whipping eggs. Unlike chiffon cakes, you don’t have to separate the egg whites and egg yolks. I got this recipe based on a youtube video by Tabi Eats. I had a little trouble cutting my cake, but the girls and my husband still loved it! 


Matcha Castella (Japanese Green Tea Sponge Cake) (~modified by Tabi Eats)

Castella is delicious on its own. But when you add Matcha, it takes the yummy factor to the next level! Matcha Green Tea has an earthy flavor that's perfect in baked goods. 


INGREDIENTS:

·       rock sugar (used gold sugar crystals. Did not have any raw sugar)

·       3/4 cup bread flour (used regular flour)

·       1 1/2 tbsp matcha powder

·       1 tbsp hot water

·       1/2 cup sugar

·       2 tbsp honey

·       3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

DIRECTIONS

1.               Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2.               Line a loaf pan with parchment paper. The original recipe lined the pan with 2 pieces of parchment paper with the outer parchment paper crumbed. I just lined with 1 piece of parchment paper. Sprinkled the bottom of the pan with sugar crystals.

3.               Sift together flour and match powder and set aside

4.               Combine honey with hot water and set aside.

5.               Heated a pan of water, and whisked the eggs in a large heat-proof bowl over heat until frothy. Then added sugar and whisked the eggs more. Then took the bowl out of the heat and whisked at high speed for additional 5 minutes. The batter should be thick and light yellow in color. Added honey and water mixture and continued to whisk a little more.

6.               Then gently folded in the flour and matcha powder mixture into the bowl with the whisked eggs in 3 batches.

7.               Poured batter into pan. Use a knife or toothpick to run it through the batter to get rid of bubbles. Also pick up and drop the pan on the counter a few times to remove additional bubbles.

8.               Baked for 10 min at 350 degrees in the middle rack. Then Baked for an additional 25 min at 300 degrees at the bottom rack.

9.               Remove cake from oven and let cool. Then I wrapped it in saran wrap. They recommend that you don't eat the cake right away, but to wrap it in saran wrap after it's cool and leave it wrapped for several hours. We ate it the next day for breakfast.