Green tea white chocolate & dark chocolate truffle bar things

Dark chocolate base is exactly the same as the hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things, except without hazelnut essence.

I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate (too sweet for me), but a work human really likes these - he took this photo - so I'm plopping the green tea white chocolate part here.

Ingredients

  • 50ml sweetened condensed milk (aka 1 part)
  • 100g white chocolate (aka 2 parts)
    Broken into squares it comes in. I'm too lazy to do more than that.
  • some matcha (about a teaspoon)
    You can get a cheap matcha from an Asian grocery ($5 or so for a small tin). Just make sure it's actually matcha, from Japan, or it will likely be waaaaay too bitter.
    T_T I thought I could be a cheapo-nug and get a 500g bag of green tea powder from Taiwan. Don't do it!!! That stuff is foul.
    Don't use ceremonial matcha (the stuff the ninja ladies in Lustbader books do tea ceremonies with) - other than being very expensive, IMO it's a waste. You lose the umamis and delicate flavours once the white chocolate steamrolls over them.
Crafting
  1. Dump white chocolate in a bowl.
  2. Shove bowl in microwave, melt at half power for 15s.
  3. Stir.
  4. Repeat Step 2 and 3 until there are just a few nubs of unmelted white chocolate left.
    Should be about 3 - 5 minutes or so of heating in total. Do NOT just set the microwave to half power for 3 minutes and nuke. You need to do the irritating nuke and stir because white chocolate burns very very easily. If you just nuke without stirring, it will burn, and there's no saving it. Well, you could pretend you wanted to 'caramelise' it. XD You can also do all this on a water bath if you want. ;)
  5. Stir until the unmelted white chocolate goes away.
  6. Plop in condensed milk, stir stir stir till incorporated.
    It will look a bit greasy, don't worry about it. :)
  7. Assuming you've also made the dark chocolate bottom, pour that into some kind of (parchment-paper-lined) pan, make pathetic attempt at forming some sort of 'slab'.
  8. Plop the green tea white chocolate blob on top, and make a further sad attempt at slabbing it evenly.
  9. Decorate in a suitably 'artisanal' fashion.
  10. Put gently in fridge (no need to cover unless your fridge has stinky things).
  11. Ignore for at least 4 hours.
  12. Remoof from fridge, cut into squares.
  13. Eat all the leavings that are ~_o 'unfit for presentation'.

Ceremonial matcha
I realised I was doing too much matcha-ranting in the ingredients section, so I moved that here...

This matcha is one of my favourite ceremonial matchas, and is great value for money for drinking.

O-cha are great, and buying from them is cheaper (shipping included) than buying matcha locally in Australia. And the quality is amazing.

If you're curious about matcha brewed usucha or koicha style, then I'd advise getting some overpriced and expensive Australian stuff (T2, kenkotea, etc), and only then getting stuff from O-cha. Then you'll really be able to compare a good matcha with a terrible (or badly stored) one. ;)


    ZOMG! No-churn green tea icecream!

    Sooo.... I discovered no-churn, no-ice-cream-maker icecreams over the weekend, and promptly went a bit mad. :( Now my tiny freezer has 5 types of icecream in it! 2 store-bought, and 3 nugget-crafted.

    You only need 3 ingredients and it's incredibly easy to make, because you just whisk them all together until they become fat and fluffy (form soft peaks).

    1st Experiment: Dark chocolate icecream with raspberries and dark chocolate chips
    Nice, but with an oddly chewy, grainy texture. I think it's because the dark chocolate had to be melted, and despite my mad whisking, it didn't all incorporate fully.

    2nd Experiment: Green tea icecream

    Ooooh. This turned out PERFECT. Similar in texture to the green tea icecreams I've had at Japanese restaurants - and as good as / indistinguishable from store-bought icecreams.

    Ingredients
    3 parts thickened / whipping cream
    2 parts condensed milk
    Umeshu to taste (and to make it stay nice and soft once frozen)
    Green tea powder to taste (not instant stuff - use the stuff the ninja tea ceremony assassin chicks use)

    Steps

    1. Put it all in a bowl together
    2. Whisk until soft peaks form
    3. Transfer into an airtight container
    4. Plop in freezer for 6+ hours
    5. Serve and eat while squealing madly

    3rd Experiment: Vanilla icecream with lemon curd ripple

    This. This is like a soft, fluffy vanilla cloud had a massive orgy with a creamy lemon curd friend. Make eet. Make eet nao. (It's the cream coloured one, if you hadn't guessed.)

    Ingredients
    3 parts thickened / whipping cream
    2 parts condensed milk
    Vanilla essence (just a leetle bit)
    Some kind of drinkable alcohol (To make it stay nice and soft once frozen - I used chinese cooking wine cause I ran out of everything else.)
    Lemon curd to taste (I used a nice store-bought brand)

    Steps

    1. Put everything but the lemon curd in a bowl together
    2. Whisk until soft peaks form
    3. Transfer a third into an airtight container
    4. Glop in lemon curd in a quantity that makes you happy
    5. Transfer the next third into the container
    6. Glop in more curd
    7. Transfer the last third
    8. Stir the whole thing with some kind of stirring implement. The more you stir, the less big and fat your ripples of lemon curd will be
    9. Plop in freezer for 6+ hours
    10. Serve and eat while squealing madly
      or
      Make someone else eat it while squealing madly
      or
      Do it together!