Koekela green tea birthday cake
I don't know if it is because I am looking too gloomy and haggard lately, but my brother and my little brother went out of their way on the morning of my birthday to surprise me with this beautiful green tea cake.
Koekela (a pastry store in Rotterdam, the Netherlands) normally doesn't sell this, as this is one of their limited time specials, the cake of the month for January. I feel quite lucky, as I normally would think twice before spending €21.75 for a cake. But since it was my birthday, I thought it was okay to splurge.
The green tea cake has a diameter of 26 cm and it is already pre-sliced in 10 slices. It is nice, as I am not sure if I can slice the cake in perfect, equal slices like that. But I had to forego my yearly tradition of making a wish, before my cake slicing ceremony.
What do I think?
The Koekela green tea cake has a thick layer of green tea frosting on top, around and in the center. I could taste that they mixed yogurt with butter to make it, as it has a very present tartness and it was firm, but creamy. However, the butter was a bit heavy on the stomach for me, as I am not used to eating cakes with a lot of butter cream.
The green tea flavor of the cake is quite okay. I really thought it would lack in this area, but I could really taste the green tea. In the picture on their website, there is also some green tea powder sprinkled on top of the cake and I think this would have given it more green tea flavor. But it might have also made it too sweet, as I think they used the green tea powder with sugar grains mixed inside that I often buy at the Chinese supermarket.
The brown green tea cake with a hue of green has a similar texture as a carrot cake or the Dutch "ontbijtkoek". Here and there, the cake is drenched by a sweet green tea syrup. I didn't really taste that (maybe because I was starting to get a cold or something), but it could also be that the syrup isn't divided equally. I might have been so unlucky that I got the slice with the least green tea syrup in it. It wasn't as dry and firm as it looked, but I still prefer a soft sponge cake.
On top of the cake, there is also a round piece of crunchy white chocolate with a thin dust of green tea and the Chinese character 茶 (tea). If they want to sell more green tea cakes around Chinese New Year, I suggest to replace it with the Chinese character 福 (lucky).
Around the outer edges, there is also a thin line of coconut shavings and bits of pistachio nuts. I am glad that they didn't cover the whole outer part with it and just used a small amount. I don't really like coconut that much, but just a hint of it was fine with me. It tasted quite good combined with the green tea flavor.
