Buttery Matcha.

You all know how much I love matcha and It's so fun to bake with. I've been drooling over matcha pictures on instagram everyday and decided it was time to make matcha frosting. I know some people don't like frosting but it's my favorite part of any cake or cupcake!

I'll be honest, I don't have every baking tool in the book so sometimes things get a little messy. I finally upgraded with a simple ice cream scoop to help eliminate mess! I originally got it to make cookie dough placement easier (and future ice cream making?!) but found it to be very useful for this batter as well. I filled each liner up with about two scoops. Some liners were a little over 3/4 way full and those are the cupcakes that had a bit of a top. I don't mind this, it actually means more area for frosting! BUT if you're the type of person who likes to have very neat, not overflowing cupcakes I would suggest using a scoop and a half or one heaping scoop! After I had the desired amount in the liner I took a chopstick into the center of the batter and swirled it in circles. This helped the batter settle.

Ah, matcha buttery frosting. YUM! I decided to use almond and matcha as a combination of flavors because I kept seeing this combo EVERYWHERE. Thinking about the heavy, full flavor of matcha and the fragrance of almond I wasn't sure if they would be good together but I as wrong! The almond flavor in this cupcake is very light and airy which goes so well with the heavy butter and matcha frosting. In my recipe, I talk about "pours" for the almond emulsion. My emulsion is very thick and comes out slowly so when I say pours I mean it literally. Each time I tipped the bottle over my bowl a drop came slowly out. I did it 3 times. You are welcome to do more or less based on how much you enjoy the fragrance and taste of almond!

Ok, so I originally wanted to do a frosting rose on top of the cupcakes. As you can see that didn't happen. I love watching cupcake and cookie decorating videos and I've been wanting to try this one method of making the rose. I thought I had the right tip but when I started piping got this short thin piece of frosting and decided to improvise. One small note, as I started piping I put too much frosting in the bag so my hands were gradually warming up the frosting. You can see in the photo below thinner and thicker lines. I put mine back in the fridge to cool it off before I continued.

You're probably wondering about these pizza slices. My original plan was to create matcha frosting because the pastel green was perfect for spring. I then put one of these pizza sprinkles, yes they're sprinkles from Tiny Kitchen Treats, on top and I LOVED how it looked! Does an almond cupcake with matcha buttercream and a pizza sprinkle make sense? Who knows, but it sure looks cute!

So what's the verdict? Matcha donuts are good. Matcha scones are better. Matcha buttercream is queen!

As many of you may know, matcha is in powder form because it consists of the ground up leaves. This is said to increase the health benefits because you're ingesting the actual leaf instead of brewing it and throwing it away. In powder form, it is also much easier to incorporate into your cooking and baking! So these cupcakes a kinda healthy, right ? ;)

The almond cupcake recipe was adapted from this one