Green Tea Macarons

I discovered the green tea powder (matcha powder) by accident when I was at Fuji Mart, a Japanese Supermarket in Prahran.  I love green tea but never thought of making them by powder before. The first idea when I saw them was to mix it up with a store-bought vanilla ice cream to create a green tea ice cream.

This was over a year ago when I had no idea that making your own ice cream was not at all difficult. Now that I've become an ice cream snob (in addition to being a bread snob and macaron snob), an idea of mixing green tea powder through vanilla ice cream (though it tastes yummy) doesn't seem enticing, kinda put me off actually. Home-made green tea ice cream is so smooth, creamy, and super yummy, yet quite easy to do. I'll post recipe later...in future blog.

Enough of the detour to green tea ice cream, back to today's blog - green tea macarons. This is one of my favourites. The slightly bitter green tea flavour blend really well with the sweetness of macaron shells. Well, macarons are all about a balance of flavour, right.

Green tea macarons recipe

Macaron shell recipe (the recipe and instructions are here in my previous blog)

make 24-26 macarons (3-cm size)

In addition to the basic recipe, you will also need:

1 1/2 teaspoon green tea powder (matcha powder)

5-6 drops green food colouring

Instructions

Folllow the instuctions on here from my blog, omitting lemon zest from the shell ingredients  and adding grean tea powder into the shell mixture. You'll need to sift green tea powder together with icing sugar and almond meal.

"Green tea powder or matcha powder, you can find them in Asian store or Japanese store. It's small tub, approximately 6cm height. It costs about $7 (Australian Dollar)."

Green tea white chocolate ganache recipe

fill 24-26 macarons (3-cm size)

Ingredients

100 g white chocolate, chopped

80ml thickened cream (whipping cream with 35% fat content)

20g butter, cut into small chunk

1 1/2 teapoon green tea powder

Place white chocolate in a bowl.

Mix green tea powder with cream in a small pot over medium-low heat. Keep stirring the green tea cream mixture until the powder dissolved. Heat the cream mixture unitl it comes to the boil.

Pour the scant cream mixture over white chocolate and let it sit for about 30 seconds. Stir the chocolate until it is melted. Scatter butter over the chocolate mixture and stir until it dissolves.

Chill the ganache mixture until ready to use.  When ready, spread about 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of ganache into macaron shell before sandwich the shells together.

 "here you go, a yummy macaron, rich in green-tea goodness of vitamin C:)"