use real butter

I’ve had matcha on my mind lately. You just can’t make real green tea any pastry without matcha, the finely ground green tea. I even dreamt about what I was going to make, but this morning I changed my mind and opted for an opera-like cake. I could use up my earl grey infused ganache and turn some other chocolate ganache into glaze. All I needed to make was the matcha spongecake and the buttercream.

It’s a good thing that I don’t particularly care for the taste of white chocolate because I find I like working with white chocolate even less. I tried out my new sheet mold today, just so I could see what it turns out and maybe even play with some luster dust.

I had an extra vanilla chiffon cake from class and decided I’d use it for dessert this weekend when we had friends over for dinner. I normally like to work with chocolate despite my indifference toward it, but this time I wanted to try something orthogonal… something strawberry.

Originally I wanted to layer the cake with pastry cream and then frost in strawberry buttercream, but pastry cream can misbehave if it gets warm. I began the previous night washing the strawberries and setting them out to dry completely. First I wanted to do some garnishes, just for fun.