Ingredients (8 slices, 20 cm tin)
Base
- 150 g digestive biscuits
- 60 g melted butter
Filling
- 500 g full fat cream cheese, at room temperature
- 110 g sugar
- 10 g matcha
- 15 g cornflour
- 3 medium eggs
- 150 ml double cream
Method
- Crush the biscuits, mix them with the butter and press into the base of a 20 cm springform tin lined with paper. Ten minutes in the fridge.
- Sift the matcha, sugar and cornflour together. Sugar breaks up matcha lumps better than anything else.
- Beat the cream cheese on low speed only until smooth, add the dry mix, then the eggs one at a time. Finish with the cream. Overbeating adds air, and air is what cracks the cake.
- Bake at 150 °C, conventional, for about 55 minutes, with a tray of hot water on the shelf below. It is done when the edge is set and the centre still wobbles slightly.
- Turn the oven off and leave it inside for an hour with the door ajar. Then at least four hours in the fridge before unmoulding.
Getting the matcha right
Heat kills the green: above 170 °C matcha turns brownish and bitter. That is why the oven is low and slow. 10 g gives a clear flavour without taking over; at 15 g the bitterness shows. The better the matcha, the greener the cake.
What helps
Two things from the shop make the difference in this cake: a scale that reads to the gram, because 10 g of matcha by eye can be 7 or 13, and a fine sieve, so no green specks show up in the filling.
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Reference matcha for this recipe: organic ceremonial matcha from Jingshan, by Matcha Zen.