The Sugar Bar

Summer is SWEET.

Get out your kaftans, maxi dresses, flip flops, tank tops, shades and straw hats. You know the drill.
Look sweet and feel sweet.

Once you’ve done that — focus on the real thing; the thing you can actually taste. It’s time for sugar, sweet and everything nice now that university term has come to its close. It really isn’t as if I’ve been staying off it to be honest and it’s not like there is never a time or reason to avoid sweets but I figured the blog has lacked a little sugary-ness for a while now so it’s only apt to post something that actually would relate to the title of the blog itself.

Besides, a little sweetness in preparation for some serious office work, more research for my dissertation and time spent on my novel-in-construction wouldn’t hurt. Instead, it should give me a boost of courage to take on the summer holidays. Don’t ask me why but I always feel oddly nervous when I’m not at uni. Not wanting to use up all my energy today (since it’s been sapped up by this oppressive equator heat) on some fancy sweet, I went back to my all-time favourite Marmorkuchen recipe.

I insisted on using matcha so that recipe had to be put aside for something that didn’t use extra virgin olive oil (wouldn’t that be too clashing with matcha?) — something that went further back to basics: the most basic of basics of marble cake recipes.

This was awesome. Smelt so great and it just filled up the kitchen with this matcha-ey perfume and it was wonderful with vanilla. There’s something fantastic about the smell of eggs cooking with sugar as well. So homey and comforting.

Just a while ago, I was told Mum went to a posh bakery and purchased a 550g Matcha Loaf. Being all posh and unique, it was sort of soaked and coated in a matcha glaze and the whole loaf was a gorgeous green with an apparently pretty sugar crust. Not one to really pay attention to price tags I reckon, Mum by some misconception of sorts thought she’d paid S$5.50 for that beautiful loaf cake (which wasn’t very large at all and produced 4 humble slices for the 4 family members — this happened when I was still up in England). She must’ve also thought ‘What a buy!’ and eagerly driven home to share it with the family. It was only later that Abz thought to enlighten Mum (after further study of the cake wrapper) as to the true price of the cake — S$12. We had a good laugh about that at the dinner table yesterday and I was reticent about my baking plans for the next day, thinking that I could surprise and blow my Mum away with this matcha cake of mine. You know…daughter makes mother proud…daughter shines brighter than the stars and both strong women bond over a bloody cake in the kitchen.

I can safely tell you that fantasy of mine was shot to hell. All bollocks.

Although I’m impressed with the flavour of this loaf cake, Mum (even though she gobbled up half a slice in 2 bites) insists it’s nothing like her posh loaf. I suppose that is true enough but oh did it ruffle a few of my feathers. Abz was quick to smooth down these feathers, insisting that it’s different but still good.

Oh what a laugh. All I want now is to have a taste of that dastard posh loaf!

This recipe has been adapted from a basic Marble Cake recipe off the BBC Goodfood website. It yields one regular-sized loaf cake.

Matcha Marble Cake
Ingredients

225g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup golden caster sugar
1 3/4 cup self-raising flour, sifted
4 eggs
3 tbs semi-skimmed milk
1/2 tbs vanilla essence
1 1/2 tsp matcha powder

Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Next, add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Fold in the flour, milk and vanilla till smooth.

Split the batter into two bowls (either 2/3 and 1/3 for the matcha batter or 1/2 and 1/2 depending on what you want the outcome to look like). In one bowl designated for the matcha batter, add the matcha 1/2 tsp by 1/2 tsp. Mix carefully with a wooden spoon.

This batter is less runny than that of my Marmorkuchen recipe. Hence, spoon in the vanilla batter as the bottom layer in a greased loaf pan. Follow this with a layer of matcha batter and alternate it till you end with vanilla batter. You can smooth the tops with a spatula and be careful to fill any holes on the surface, especially in the corners of the pan.
Lightly tap the work surface that the pan is sat on to get rid of any air pockets within the batter.

As this batter is more firm, it is recommended to swirl the batters together with a skewer to achieve a marble effect.

*Note: this recipe will produce a cake with a browned outer surface so do not worry too much about the marble effect on the outside.