Matcha and White Chocolate Cupcakes

So unless you live under a rock, you’ll have heard about Matcha. It’s a “health food” but it’s a lot trendier than goji berries or açai etc, because it’s not new or ‘undiscovered’ – it’s been used in East Asian culture for, like, ever! Matcha is basically stone ground green tea leaves; it has more benefits than green tea because you actually consume the leaves themselves as opposed to the water from brewed leaves like green tea. It gives you buckets of slow-release energy and has lots of antioxidant benefits. Yeah so I’m sure you’re all wondering how and why this information has this made its way on to BBH? Basically, it’s super trendy to bake with Matcha. It has a slightly earthy taste, that is complemented by a lot of flavours we know well (white chocolate, lemon, honey etc). It used to be exclusively Japanese bloggers and restaurants that dabbled with Matcha, but now it’s a lot more accessible, and it tastes so good!

Matcha is typically made into a hot drink – with hot water for tea, or hot milk for a matcha latte. The latter can be quite sweet and is an excellent caffeinated hot chocolate alternative if you fancy a change from the usual mocha. The flavour doesn’t have the sourness of green tea, but is slightly more deep and complex (like me). You can of course, bake with Matcha and it lends a lovely green hue to everything with no artificial colour! It’s not an overpowering flavour, and can be very subtle. These cupcakes are particularly subtle, but you can adapt them to have as much, or as little matcha flavour as you’d like. I may or may not have introduced Matcha in this post as a health food – just to clarify, these cupcakes certainly do not count as healthy! Whilst the cake part of these cupcakes probably aren’t that bad for you, the (pink) white chocolate ganache, vanilla frosting, Matcha frosting, and white chocolate shards, probably are. YOLO, though.

WeLoveMatcha is a great U.K. based brand selling Matcha and the various paraphernalia necessary. They were kind enough to offer BakedByH readers a 20% discount on their products! The WeLoveMatcha Starter Kit would be a great gift or perfect to start the summer grind, if you need more energy for the gym or the library!

Use code bakedbyh20 for the generous discount (this is not an affiliate code – I don’t make any money from you guys using the code!) 😊

For more benefits of Matcha, read this.

Makes 12 cupcakes

185g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Between 1 tsp and 1 tbsp matcha powder (I used a little over a teaspoon)

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs

115g salted butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

180g greek yogurt (I used Fage 0%)

1. Heat an oven to 160FAN. Line a muffin tin with liners.

2. In a bowl, weigh out the flour, baking powder, bicarb and matcha. Whisk together and set aside.

3. Using a mixer, beat the sugar with the eggs for a few minutes until frothy (it will look a bit like a smoothie).

4. Add the softened butter and vanilla extract, mix again to incorporate. Then add the greek yoghurt.

5. Fold the wet in to the dry slowly and carefully. It’s a thick batter so shouldn’t take too long.

6. I like to use an ice cream scoop to portion out the cupcakes, and then bake for 15-17 minutes. Or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

7. Decorate however you like, I used this frosting recipe, and added a teaspoon of Matcha to half of it, and vanilla extract to the other half. I also used this white chocolate ganache recipe (and then coloured it pink). For the chocolate shards, I just melted some more white chocolate, coloured half of it pink, and then spread it out on some parchment paper and swirled it together. I sprinkled freeze dried raspberries on top before it set.