Matcha do about nothing

So today was my friend's 21st (insert obligatory shout-out) and shame upon shame, we forgot about the cake! Now this was remembered at 8.30pm the night before with university classes looming at 8am the next day. What's a sloth to do? Easy, make a matchamisu. Simple, quick, and I had the majority of ingredients sitting somewhere in my kitchen.

You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a matchamisu? And to be honest, it's just a tiramisu substituted with green tea. I'm not talking tea leaves, I'm talking about matcha; that holy green powder above all else. Brilliant bright green with a pleasant, although somewhat bitter aftertaste, it's becoming more and more common to find desserts that use matcha.

See this? This is truly the drink of gods. 

Bright green matchamisu; poor quality photo can be blamed on my potato of a phone camera.

Unfortunately I don't have any in-progress shots thanks to poor forward planning but this is pretty straight forward.This recipe differs slightly from the more traditional tiramisu in that there are no eggs involved, mostly because I didn't trust the refrigerative abilities of my cooler bag that I picked up earlier this year at the Good Food and Wine Festival; but even without the eggs, it was creamy and decadent and left people smiling and satisfied.

It also gives you the flexibility of changing how it tastes; too sweet, decrease the sugar; too bitter, increase the sugar; not green enough, add more matcha. You can also mix it up with the chocolate, I chose white chocolate for it's mild taste, but I can definitely see this working with dark chocolate. Ideally you want a balance of 'I can taste the green tea but it's not bitter at all' but hey, everyone's tastes are different and if you like bitter green tea, then who am I to judge?

Eggless Matchamisu

Feeds 8 hungry uni students

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

"Cake"

• 2 packets of ladyfinger biscuits 
• 3/4 C water
• 1/4 C sugar
• 2 tsp matcha 

"Cream"

• 500g marscapone (I used 2x250g packets)
• 300mL thick cream (not whipping cream)
• 20g icing sugar
• 2Tbs matcha 
• white chocolate, grated

• additional matcha and icing sugar to dust

METHOD

1. Put the water, sugar and matcha into a saucepan and mix well. Heat the mixture until boiling and reduce it til about half the volume is left. Once that's done, leave it to cool.
2. For the cream, combine all ingredients except the white chocolate in a bowl and beat it until it's soft and well combined with a uniform colour. 
3. Assemble the matchamisu:
• Dip the ladyfinger biscuits in the cooled matcha syrup to moisten them. Don't do it for too long otherwise you're going to end up with a mushy biscuit.
• Arrange the biscuits in your serving dish/container/receptacle so they cover a layer.
• Cover the biscuits with the cream and throw some grated chocolate on top.
• Repeat until adequate layers have been formed, but just keep in mind the final layer should be cream.
• Dust the top with matcha and icing sugar.
4. Refrigerate until ready to serve. 

Happy slothing!

xx