Recipe: Green Tea Confectionery

Did you know that green tea can be used to bake confectionery? It gives cakes a delicious taste and makes them healthier. Try this traditional Christmas variant using green tea!

This original idea comes from Japanese confectioners, who today add ground green tea to their sweets and desserts as standard. They therefore create cakes with an interesting green colour that contain a large dose of vitamins. This is because green tea retains many vitamins, carotene and amino acids in baked confectionery.

For baking Japanese confectioners primarily use matcha Japanese green tea, which they grind into a fine powder. It is traditionally ground in stone mills using the best tea leaves from the spring harvest. You can buy it at our partner website Oxalis.cz.

 

What to Watch Out For with Green Tea

Because green tea has a very bold flavour, which becomes more bitter over time, it is better to bake sweets later than usual. Plan your baking no earlier than two or three weeks before Christmas. Over such a period green confectionery could become slightly bitter.

Ground matcha can be added to various types of confectionery. If you are going to use it for rolled pastry, however, remember that green tea absorbs water. Therefore do not roll the pastry for cutting thinner than 3mm, otherwise the sections could split during baking.

Keep a careful eye on it during baking. At 180°C it is enough to bake the confectionery for 5–10 minutes. If you leave them in for longer, the confectionery loses its green colour, as well as some vitamins and other substances beneficial to your health. After baking you can stick the pieces together with jam and serve them with afternoon tea. Store the finished products in a sealable jar, so that they do not lose their colour and taste.

 

Recipe for Traditional Czech Confectionery with Green Tea

For green Czech confectionery we will need: 10–15g of powdered green tea; 300g fine-grain flour, 200g butter, 100g icing sugar, 1 sachet of vanilla sugar, 2 egg yolks and lemon rind. And obviously jam to stick the pieces together.

We mix the ingredients on a rolling board and thoroughly knead the dough. Leave it for at least an hour in a cool place and then roll it to a thickness of at least 3mm and cut the various shapes. Bake on a baking tray on baking paper at 180°C for 5–10 minutes. After cooling stick the pieces together with jam.

The non-traditional fresh green confectionery will certainly impress both you and your visitors. Try baking it yourself.

(Source including image: http://blog.darjeeling.cz/2011/12/02/vanocni-curkovi-s-matchou-a-bobem-marleym/)