Well, my upcoming (almost) 2 weeks NZL trip is a couple of days and with a more than 3/4 tub of plain greek yogurt left sitting in the fridge, I felt the need to bake something with it. Just, anything.
And since it just so happened that I bought a pack of dried osmanthus flower at Phoon Huat recently, and there's still a good amount of green tea powder left sitting in my baking cabinet, how about putting all these together into a cake?
So to get 1 loaf cake of 8 to 10 slices, you'll need:
50g superfine wholemeal flour
145g all purpose flour
2 tsp green tea powder
40ml green tea flavoured milk
1 tbsp dried osmanthus flower
1 large egg
60g castor sugar
70ml vegetable oil
100g plain greek yogurt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp chia seeds (optional)
Note: I personally felt that the green tea taste could have been a lot stronger, so I would probably try with at least 1 tbsp of green tea powder next time. Sweetness level of this cake is also greatly reduced, so you may increase the amount of sugar according to your preference.
You may also use 195g of all purpose flour instead of using a mixture of superfine wholemeal and all purpose flours.
First up, heat up your milk in a pot over the hob until it starts to simmer and add in the osmanthus flower. Give it a light stir, take it off the heat and set it aside for the osmanthus flower to steep, and also for the mixture to cool down.
In a clean bowl, add in your greek yogurt, egg, oil and cooled osmanthus milk mixture and stir well to combine. Sift in your dry ingredients and fold with a spatula until just combined. Tip in the chia seeds (if you fancy them) and give it a quick fold with the spatula to combine.
Pour your batter into a small loaf pan (mine roughly measures 18cm by 5.5cm) greased with non-stick cooking spray and bake it at a 175 degree Celsius oven for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Let it cool down for about 5 minutes in the loaf pan (until it's cool enough for you to handle) before tipping the cake out onto a wire rack and leave it to cool completely.
And there you have it, osmanthus green tea yogurt cake! The addition of yogurt makes the cake extremely moist and tender. And although the addition of dried osmanthus flower did not really give the cake a very distinctive osmanthus taste, it did give the cake a very nice and sweet osmanthus aroma.
Till then,
Mia Foo
