Fluffy Houjicha Cake Recipe

To make my fluffy houjicha cake recipe, you'll need houjicha powder rather than houjicha tea leaves.

Houjicha is Japanese roasted green tea, and it usually comes in tea leaf form – dried and ready to steep in hot water to brew a deliciously rich tea.

But you can also find it in fine powder form, a little like matcha. Of course, instead of matcha's bright green hue, houchija powder is brown since it's been roasted. But in powder form, it can be used in a similar way to matcha. And that includes making green tea cake with it.

My fluffy houjicha cake recipe adds houjicha powder to a super fluffy, light genoise sponge base, and finishes it with a lightly sweet houjicha whipped cream.

The genoise sponge cake recipe itself is very simple. Instead of whipping the eggs over a hot water bath (as is the way with traditional genoise cakes), I simply whip them up in regular, water bath-less bowl. The houjicha simply gets folded in along with the flour.

Because my houjicha cake has a genoise sponge base, the airiness of the sponge is a double-edged sword: the more air in a sponge cake, the faster it'll go dry. That's where the simple syrup comes in – in this recipe, I also make a simple sugar syrup to brush over the bare cake layers, sealing in the moisture.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

 Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients for Houjicha Cake:

4 eggs
145g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
100g self-raising flour
2 tbsp houjicha powder
15g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp milk

Ingredients for Houjicha Cream:

500ml whipping cream
1 tbsp houjicha powder
2 tbsp caster sugar

To Dust:

1/2 tsp houjicha

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line two 8" round baking tins with a little vegetable oil and non-stick paper.

2. Place the eggs and sugar together in a large bowl, and beat with an electric whisk until the egg and sugar mixture is thick, fluffy and mousse-y. This will take about 10 minutes.

3. Sift in the flour and houjicha powder, and very gently fold together until just combined. Then fold in the butter and milk, and divide evenly between the two cake tins.

4. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until puffy and a toothpick poked into the centre of one comes out clean. Leave to cool completely.

5. While the cakes are cooling, make the syrup by mixing the sugar and water together in a small saucepan, bringing to a boil, and boiling for three minutes. Set the syrup aside to cool, too.

6. When the cakes and syrup have cooled, brush the syrup onto the cakes (use all of the syrup, dividing evenly between the two cakes).

7. Whisk all of the houjicha cream ingredients together until thick and pipeable.

8. Place one of the cakes on a serving plate (don't forget to remove any lining paper), and pipe on blobs of cream in a circle along the edge on top of the cake. Dollop on more cream in the middle in a thick layer and spread it evenly before gently pressing the second cake on top.

9. Pipe on more cream in any pattern you like on top, and dust about 1/2 tsp houjicha over the top to finish. You can serve it immediately, or chill it in the fridge for four hours first to let the cream set a little and make it easier to slice.

Enjoy, and have fun.