Raspberry Cakes with Matcha - Cream Cheese - White Chocolate Frosting

Raspberry season has started. Our freezer is still packed with raspberries from the bumper harvest last summer and I'm trying to turn them into desserts in order to make place for the new ones, so you are going to see a lot of raspberry sweets in the coming weeks. Hope you like raspberries.

There are several combination which I'm totally mad about: raspberry-matcha tea, raspberry-chocolate and raspberry-milky flavour (sometimes infused with herbs and weeds like lemon balm/like in this melissa raspberry etremet/, mint, lavender, camomile or rose).

I had no intention of making these cakes. It was almost midnight and I was almost dozing over my laptop when I remembered I'd taken some raspberries out of the freezer so it was time for baking, and here's the result. They turned out to be delicious but I wanted the raspberry colour to be more vivid, although this one isn't so bad.

Tea: We had a certain discordance on this matter. I prefered those cakes with matcha latte, while Ivan liked them better with sencha tea.

Raspberry Cakes with Matcha - Cream Cheese - White Chocolate Frosting Recipe:

Makes: six 8,5 cm cakes
For the Raspberry Cakes:

• 65 gr butter;
• 85 gr sugar;
• pinch of salt;
• 1 tsp vanilla extract;
• 1 egg;
• 75 gr raspberry pulp;
• 1 Tbsp rum;
• 140 gr self-raizing flour.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a baking sheet with silpat or parchment paper. Place 6 rings(Ø 8.5 cm) over the silpat.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in salt, vanilla and egg and then raspberry pulp and rum. At the end, beat in self-raizing flour. Fill rings no more than two-thirds full. Bake for around 15 – 17 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

For the Frosting:

• 150 gr white chocolate, melted;
• 230 gr cream cheese;
• 6 gr matcha green tea.

Whisk cream cheese to soften it, then add melted white chocolate and sifted matcha.

Scoop the frosting into a pastry bag equipped with star tip and cover the cakes with frosting stars.