Green Tea Ice Cream

While I'm on the green tea trend, I made some green tea ice cream. The first batch of homemade ice cream this season marks the start of many warm sunny days...

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp green tea powder
• 1 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup sugar + 6 g splenda (or 1/2 cup sugar)
• pinch salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

Place egg yolk in a large bowl that will hold at least 4 cups of liquid. Stir together 2 tbsp sugar and cornstarch and set aside. In a pot, place in the rest of the sugar (and substitute) and green tea powder and stir to mix evenly. Add water and cream and heat on medium heat, whisking to make sure everything is evenly mixed. Once cream mixture is just simmering (tiny bubbles should be forming at the surface and it should feel hot if you put a drip on your finger), take pot off heat. Add sugar and cornstarch to egg yolk and whisk to form a lumpy mixture. Slowly pour hot cream into the egg yolk and sugar mixture while whisking. Now pour entire mixture back into the pot and stir with a heat proof spatula or wooden spoon gently until it thickens a bit. Mixture should coat the spatula or back of spoon and leave a clean track when you run a finger across it. Strain mixture through a sieve, allow to cool to room temperature and chill completely in the fridge.

Pour into pre-frozen ice-cream maker after chilling and churn away! For me, it took about 25 minutes for a chunk to get stuck, so I knew it was ready. Scoop into a freezable container (about 4 cups volume) and freeze for a few hours to let ice-cream firm up.

Churning ice cream after 15 minutes. 

Some microwave toffee walnuts to go with the ice cream. 

A few hours later: green tea ice cream

Green Tea Croissants

There's this program called "peaksaver" in Canada where electricity costs more during the daytime on weekdays and less at night and on weekends, so as to lower the stress on the power grid. This means I save most of the baking for weekends. Sometimes it becomes too hard to wait for the weekend and I find myself getting started on a weekday. Last week was one of those weeks, but I thought of the perfect thing to make: croissants. Croissants are made by folding a layer of solid fat (usually butter) into a yeast dough, and folding the resultant dough over and over again to achieve many layers. Making them can take up to a few days because the dough has to rest in the fridge for hours between each fold. Starting on a Thursday night made them ready for baking on Saturday. I combined cream cheese and butter with some green tea powder for the fat layer for half the recipe, and just butter and green tea powder for the other half. Since I only had whole wheat flour at home, I used that for both recipes. Both turned out alright. The cream cheese croissants were softer while the butter ones were crispier.

The Recipe:
Ingredients:
Fat layer:

• 100 g unsalted butter
• 125 g plain cream cheese (or use all butter if desired)
• 2 tsp green tea powder

Dough:

• 250 g whole wheat flour
• 25 g pea fibre (not really necessary)
• 1 tsp yeast
• ~1 cup lukewarm water
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt

Softened the butter and cream cheese, add green tea powder, and stir together to combine. Roll into a large, flat square about 6" (~15 cm) wide between two pieces of plastic wrap. Store on a flat surface in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes to let it firm up. Meanwhile, prepare the dough by stirring all ingredients together and kneading it into an smooth, elastic ball. Roll out into a rectangle about 7" by 14" (~17.5 by 35 cm) large. The idea is to get it slightly larger than twice the size of the butter layer. Place the chilled butter layer on one side of the rolled out dough and fold the other side over so that the butter is sandwiched between two layers of dough. Make sure there are no air pockets between dough and butter and pinch the sides to seal the butter in. 

Roll the dough out a bit so that it becomes a rectangle with one set of edges longer than the original 7". Fold into three like a letter, wrap loosely with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for anywhere between 1 to 8 hours. Repeat this roll, fold, and chill process again three to four more times. 

When the final dough has had time to chill and rise slightly in the fridge, it is ready to be rolled out, cut, and shaped into a croissant. On a floured surface, roll out dough into a layer just less than 0.5" (~1 cm) thick. Cut into triangles and add a small slit at the base of the triangle to help with even baking. Roll into crescents starting at the base, and place on a lined baking sheet. Allow to rise at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours and bake in a 350F (~175C) oven for 20 – 25 min. Allow to cool on a rack. 

Green tea butter sitting on dough

Cut out dough, ready to be shaped into a croissant

Before baking (this is the cream cheese and butter batch)

Before baking (this is the pure butter batch)

Fresh from the oven (this is the butter batch)

Texture of the cream cheese and butter croissants (retained green tea colour better than the butter ones)

Texture of the pure butter croissants

Checkerboard Tea Wafers

If you've been doing any shopping lately, you must have seen how packed all the malls, department stores, and superstores are. I don't just mean packed with people in the line-ups. I mean, the parking lots are full; drivers are hastily dropping off passengers to get a head start in the store; and the aisles and shelves are stacked to the ceiling with products. Not to mention those huge, brightly coloured "sale" signs everywhere. Although I consider holiday shopping more fun than stressful, I look forward to a hot cup of tea after. What better to go with the tea than these tea cookies? They are thin and crispy like a wafer, and flavoured with two of my favourite kinds of tea: earl grey and green tea. I didn't want to mix the flavours, so I decided to do a checkerboard design. 

The Recipe: 
Sift and stir dry ingredients: 

• 1/2 cup wheat bran
• 1/3 cup chapati flour 
• 1/4 cup defatted soy flour
• 3 tbsp white sugar (if you prefer sweeter, you can add more, or dust with icing sugar after baking, or add a glaze)
• 1 tsp instant dry yeast 
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp crushed earl grey tea leaves (or 1 tsp matcha green tea powder)

Wet ingredients: 

• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 whole egg
• 2 tbsp butter

Melt butter and add to milk. Crack in the egg and whisk to get a fairly even mixture. Stir into flour mixture until a dough ball forms. Dough should be soft, almost like a bread dough. Wrap or cover and place in a warm place to let rise. In another bowl, repeat the recipe, but add 1 tsp matcha green tea powder. Allow both doughs to rest and rise for about 30 minutes. Roll out both pieces of dough in one layer to 1/8" (just less than 0.5 cm) thickness. Dough will be soft (this helps with rise and wafer texture) so dust with flour as needed. Cut out into a grid of squares. Go for any size you like here. Arrange squares in a checkerboard pattern on a lined baking sheet with edges just touching each other. Cut out large rounds with a cookie cutter. At this point, you can remove the scraps to just get the perfect circles, but I couldn't bring myself to waste the effort of lining them up, so I just left them there. They snap off easily after baking anyway. 

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 – 20 minutes. Allow to cool on a rack and enjoy!

Note: You can cut into strips or make the two cookies separately (and have a bite of each at a time) if you wish. Green tea powder can also be found in Chinese supermarkets or tea shops. 

Dry ingredients for green tea cookies

Checker arrangement. I didn't figure to do this on the baking tray and had to flip this over. 

Fresh baked checkerboard tea cookies. 

Checkerboard tea cookies

White chocolate green tea truffle cheesecakes

I decided to try a new recipe this weekend by combining green tea and white chocolate into a cheesecake. The idea was to use white chocolate to sweeten and add richness to the regular green tea cheesecake. It resulted in a truffle-like texture and a delicious sweet-tart taste due to the combination of white chocolate and green tea powder. I used mini-muffin tins to portion these cheesecakes.

The recipe: The crust: I combine 1/4 cup dark buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup barley flour, 3 tbsp melted butter, 1/8 tsp salt, 1 tbsp sugar in a bowl and divide and press into the bottom of 24 mini-muffin tins. These bake in a 300 F oven for 10 minutes and allow to cool. The cheesecake: I combine 3/4 cup plain, light cream cheese with 1/2 cup plain, fat-free greek yogurt in a bowl. Then I stir in 3 oz melted white baking chocolate, 1 tsp green tea powder, and 1 tsp cornstarch. Finally, I add 1/2 cup liquid egg, and 1 tsp vanilla extract if desired. Once the cheesecake batter is thoroughly mixed, I divide it into the 24 mini-muffin tins and bake in a 300 F oven for 12-15 minutes. Once they cool for 10 minutes or so, they can be gently eased out of the muffin tins and and chilled for a few hours before serving. Yum!

Note: The base to these cheesecakes can be substituted with the base for the purple cheesecake or a traditional graham cracker cheesecake base if preferred.