Banana-Green Tea Cake

My Green Tea Envy brought about by Diva D's baking of green tea biscuits last night led me to an early rise today. After making sure Diva D was no longer in the house, I quickly delved into her baking stuff at one corner of the kitchen. My forehead was glistening with perspiration and and my eyes glowed with anticipation as I opened her container of matcha tea powder and breathed in the heavenly, herbal aroma. Uhmmmmm.....(deep inhaling sound). Uh-oh, I could feel a Green Tea Binge session coming up.

I had some grand ideas which included green tea pavlova, green tea biscuits with almond, green tea cupcake filled with red bean paste, topped with green tea frosting. Alas, some of the ingredients were not stocked in the pantry and I needed to satisfy the craving, like, quite immediately! So I scavanged around the kitchen some more and what did I find? BANANAS. Overripe and perfect for baking. The only problem was, there were a mix of them - plantains as well as those little local bananas we call pisang kapas. I resolved the issue by just mixing them all together. When life hands you different types of bananas, you just go and make something out of all of them. An anomaly to the lemons and lemonade story, tropical-style.

I used my normal banana cake recipe but just added two tablespoons of matcha/green tea powder. This part really depends on whether you like the taste of green tea or not, and I happen to love it. It has side benefits as an antioxidant (read: anti-aging) and speeds up your metabolism (read: weight-loss) too, so I try to consume green tea whenever I can remember.

The usual suspects (butter, flour, sugar, egg) + matcha powder

Another key ingredient in the form of mashed-up lurrrve... (bananarama)

The luscious green colour of green tea - will it stay this way once cooked?

As I'm typing this, the cake is still in the oven. I can smell it all the way from my bedroom upstairs though, and I can't wait.

The baked caked. Yep, it's still green!

I had no vanilla ice-cream in the freezer, so I scraped slivers of the rainbow ice-cream that somebody had bought and placed it next to the banana cake. Scary, yes...but fun. Oh yah, definitely yummy!