Matcha Sponge Cake with Maple Poached Blueberries is a light and airy green tea sponge cake, topped with sous vide maple poached blueberries.
Nope, no orange here today, folks! Just the striking green and blue of Matcha Sponge Cake with Maple Poached Blueberries. I've got some pumpkin goodies lined up, but not before catching up on some long overdue draft posts.
I was leafing through my binder from the Professional Chocolatier Certificate I completed a few years back. It's a thick beast that holds all the recipes and endless notes from all six sections of the program:
- Baking Arts (12 weeks)
- Introduction to Chocolate (10 weeks)
- Chocolate Theory (6 weeks)
- Chocolate Desserts (12 weeks)
- Chocolate Confections (12 weeks)
- Chocolate Showpieces (10 weeks)
I landed on an entremet we created in Chocolate Desserts that I've been planning to recreate for some time. Too busy, or too lazy, to tackle all the components, I settled on just one - a matcha sponge cake. I think you already know about my longstanding love for the green stuff!
Not in the mood for layers (a rare occurrence), I decided to dumb it down to two components - cake and fruit. What better than the regal blueberry. Shhh... raspberry was my first choice, but we snacked on too may and came up short for coverage.
I am generally not a fan of cooked fruit, but the fresh blueberries just weren't wowing me, aesthetically. So, I poached the berries in a maple syrup mixture via sous vide. We did something similar with a variety of black fruit in a Valrhona workshop I attended a little while back and I quite enjoyed the results.
They kept some of the firmness and freshness of uncooked berries, along with the desired shine and stickiness (critical for keeping them piled in place).
Sponge cakes are fairly simple, as far as ingredients and effort go. In place of baking powder, this sponge cake depends on mechanical leavening via whipping the hell out of the eggs. The entrapped air is what causes the batter to expand and rise, creating a tender crumb. So, there is no skipping or skirting the full twenty minutes indicated in the recipe.
Unless you are sporting Michelle Obama guns (so jealous), you'll definitely want to use a stand mixer for this one. That's twenty minutes freed up for, urmmm... perfecting that new dance move, or gramming!
Tips for a perfect sponge cake:
- Precisely! Invest in a digital scale and scale your ingredients for precision.
- Fresh & Warm. Eggs play a pretty important role in sponge cakes; ensure they are fresh and at room temperature.
- No Plastic, Please! Use a metal or glass bowl, eggs don't like plastic.
- Mise en place! To work quickly and not have the batter sit too long, have all ingredients scaled and ready for addition.
- Batter Up! I used a silicone mold that does not require greasing. If using tin pans, grease and parchment are your best friends. I like to place the pan with the batter on a baking tray in the event of spillage.
- Deflate Gate. Fold in the dry ingredients for best results, so that you don't deflate all that air you have created by whipping.
- Drop It Like It's Hot! My grandmother swears by dropping the pan on the counter from about chest height when you first take it out of the oven. I've never had a sponge collapse, so imma keep doing this!
- TURNT OUT. Don't let it sit in the pan to cool. You will want to turn the cake out shortly after you remove it from the oven. I normally do that around the five-minute mark.
- Chill & Serrate. Oh, and chill the cake before cutting with a serrated knife, so that it doesn't look as ragged as mine. (I was in a hurry)
Ingredients
For the sponge:
- 180 grams pastry flour
- 180 grams granulated sugar
- 6 large eggs
- 15 grams coconut milk
- 31 grams coconut yogurt or sour cream
- 22 grams matcha green tea powder
- 1 Rodelle vanilla bean scraped
For the berries:
- 2 punnets fresh blueberries
- 1 cup pure maple syrup
- ½ cup water to thin the syrup
For the whipped topping:
- 250 millilitres 35% whipping cream
- granulated sugar as needed
- Rodelle almond extract to taste
Instructions
Make the sponge:
- Preheat oven to 340ºF. Prepare the baking mold or pan and set on a baking tray.
- Sift the flour and matcha together in a small bowl and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the eggs for 10 minutes. Add the sugar, vanilla and continue whipping 10 minutes, until the mixture has doubled in volume.
- Use a silicone spatula to fold the flour and matcha mixture into the whipped eggs.
- Fold in the coconut cream until evenly combined.
- Pour the cake mixture into the mold and bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven and pan size.
- Use a toothpick to check for doneness and remove the cake from oven.
- Top with berries or whipped cream and enjoy!
Make the berries:
- Heat water bath to 85ºC. Add all ingredients to a freezer bag, seal using the water displacement method and cook for 20-30 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before topping cake. (You can prepare this stovetop if you don't own an immersion cooker)
Make the whipped cream:
- Add the whipping cream, sugar and extract to a chilled bowl and whisk to soft, stable peaks with a chilled whisk.
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