Sakura Matcha Chiffon

Finally I baked my Sakura Matcha Chiffon! Been wanting to bake this since last month, after my return from Nagoya, where I bought a packet of early spring green tea powder and pickled sakura flower.

The recipe is from Junko Fukuda's Chiffon Cake Book 福田淳子, 好吃戚风蛋糕轻松上手. Many home bakers seem to have this book and everyone raved about how good the chiffon recipes are, in their blogs, so I also bought a copy recently :)

The book has separate recipes for Sakura Chiffon and Matcha Chiffon. Since I didn't have Sakura leaf powder, I just use the Matcha Chiffon recipe top with some pickled sakura, like what Cuisine Paradise did.

The book also provides proportions of ingredients for both 17cm chiffon pan and 20 cm chiffon pan; I opted for the latter.

But I found the batter quantity too much for a 20cm pan. Usually I will fill the batter to about 2/3 full, otherwise the cake will rise too high and then have massive cracks (this situation happened to me a few times when I tried to fill the pan to 3/4). So for the remaining batter, I used a petite chiffon pan and 3 square paper cups.

Another intriguing thing is the recipe does not call for Cream of Tartar which is typically used to stabilise beaten egg whites. So I wonder if the chiffon would turn out as fluffy and tender as expected?

 This is the early spring green tea (first pick green tea) and pickled cherry blossom.

Strictly speaking, this is not really matcha since the green tea is not finely grinded into powder. This is just extra fine tea leaves? The taste is pretty raw, like grass actually, and I thought it might be interesting to use this for the chiffon instead of pure matcha.

Indeed, the chiffon didn't turn out to be deep homogenous green like the typical Matcha Chiffon. Mine is more like speckled greens all around. LOL. But the fragrance of the green tea is prominent and that is the key.

And even though there's no egg white stabilising agent, the chiffon still turned out very tender, moist and most importantly cottony soft! The pickled sakura added a tinge of saltiness to the otherwise sweet cake and I thought it was quite a nice touch.

 This is the petite matcha chiffon without the sakura.

The matcha chiffon cupcake.

All in all, Junko's recipe is indeed very good and I'm all for trying out the rest of her recipes!

Sakura Matcha Chiffon Cake
Recipe from  Junko Fukuda's Chiffon Cake Book 福田淳子, 好吃戚风蛋糕轻松上手
Makes 1 x 20cm chiffon pan, 1 x 10cm chiffon pan and 3 cupcakes

• 130g cake flour (I use Japanese Nissen Violet flour)
• 15g matcha powder (I use early spring green tea powder)
• 5 egg yolks
• 80g oil (neutral tasting like canola or grapeseed, don't use olive oil)
• 95g water
• 130g caster sugar (I use Japanese sugar)
• 7 egg whites
• Some pickled sakura

1. Preheat oven at 180 degree Celsius, conventional mode.
2. Soak some pickled sakura in water for 30 mins. Pat dry and lay at bottom of chiffon pan. Set aside.
3. Sift the cake flour and green tea powder twice, and set aside.
4. Mix together egg yolks, oil, water and 1/3 caster sugar, until well-blended.
5. Gradually stir in the sifted flour mixture and fold gently until blended. Set aside.
6. Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites till foamy. Gradually add in the remaining sugar and beat on high speed till stiff peak.
7. Fold 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the batter (3) until just blended. Next, fold in half of the remaining egg white mixture until just blended. Finally pour the batter back into the mixing bowl containing the remaining 1/3 of the egg white mixture. Fold gently till just blended.
8. Pour the batter into the chiffon pan, and bake at 180 degree Celsius for 40 mins.
9. After 40 mins, turn the pan upside down and let completely cool before removing the cake from the pan.

* For the 10-cm pan and cupcakes, bake for about 20-25 mins.

Update:

I made this green tea chiffon for a dear friend's birthday. To make it look prettier and more presentable as a birthday cake, I frost the chiffon with some pink tinted whipped cream and decorate with the pickled sakura on top of the frosting.