DIY Matcha-Cranberry Cake

Those who know me in person do also know that I rarely take sugar in tea, there should be no reason provided the tea is at least half decent.

On the other hand, those who know me also do know that I have a sweet tooth, or rather a sweet jaw, to be more precise. And so it did happen that several people have asked about the recipe of my recent Matcha-Cranberry cake which I am happy to disclose here. 

The basic recipe is one I learned from my tribe's elder ladies, they were probably hoping I might remember if only it would be simple enough. Anyhow, the basic version is more or less a pound cake or Gleichschwerteig in my native tongue. Cannot get much simpler.

You need 250 gram of each of the four main ingredients, butter, sugar, flour and eggs.* On top of that, between half and one sachet of baking powder is highly recommended for fluffiness. Do. Not. Forget. Never!

And this is it. Even the typical male with just a basic barbecue education should be able the manage. Still, there are some further aspects one might want to take into consideration, so here's the preparation step by step:

1. Beat butter and sugar together until creamy.** 
2. Add eggs one by one and continue beating.
3. Mix flour with baking powder (8 to 15g).*** 
4. Add flour and keep beating until you feel the urge to put a spoon inside and try. 
5. Bake at 160°C in a convection oven or at 175°C with top and bottom heat for about 50 minutes.

Now we have covered the base, let's go green, because up until now it is more or less a sand cake or a Madeira cake, but without lemon and, um, Madeira. I suggest adding at least 10% of the flour's weight in Matcha, I took almost 30g for the one shown here. The easiest way is to mix it under the flour in step 2. Cannot get much easier, can it? In case you might ask, I did NOT reduce the amount of flour, but I dare you to experiment, that should work as well, you might have to add some minutes to the baking time then.

As for the cranberries, I took some already soaked in Agave syrup, cut them in halves and quarters (euphemism for wild hacking using a huge chopper) and then rolled them in flour. Need to know why? Well, try without. Many ingredients like dried fruits and such have a tendency to end up on the bottom of the finished cake, covering them in flour before adding them to the dough seems to somewhat keep them from completely free flowing into the abyss. And this already is the final step, add about 80% of the berries to the dough, fill it into the baking mould, add the remaining berries on top and then let the heat do its magic.

When the cake has cooled down, cover it with white chocolate or whatever you consider appropriate. 

Enjoy. I can tell you, I did. I was never too fond of Matcha-based food, certainly not Matcha Latte and also not Matcha cakes or even Tiramisu. I tend to believe that most commercial products use very low quality Matcha and/or not enough, so often the produce might look green, but the taste is mostly rather dull. Of course I can sympathise with these bakers, good Matcha has its price, but when I want a cake to just look green, I might as well add food colouring or grass.**** 

P.S.: Yes. Of course. Many other variations can be derived from this basic recipe. My personal favourite is marble, chocolate (add top notch dark chocolate powder) or lemon (add zest and juice) cake. In case you want to go nuts (or almonds) I suggest partially substituting the flour with the ground nuttiness. But this was about Matcha, so let us not divert further.

* Or any other amount in any unit you prefer, but then YOU do the math with the amount of baking powder. 

** Make sure sugar crystals are mostly dissolved, otherwise the final cake might not appear as desired. This works best with butter at room temperature. In a heated room, not an igloo.

*** Ideal amount may vary. Most recipes recommend 8g, but I am happy with the results at 15g.

**** No, not THAT grass. THAT does not give much colour. And I do not know about THAT anyway.

Fun with dice 🎲

You know what to avoid when being challenged by a three year old, don't you? Correct, never accept when they dare you into a game of memory. I learned it the hard way, several times. I know, I might be a slow learner. 

Recently, when trying to avoid private humiliation at memory once again, I managed to switch the prodigy's attention to a number of games based on pure luck - better odds for me...

The game came with a six colour die (instead of numbers) - certainly familiar to most tea lovers:

• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Red
• Black
• Purple

Thus, not a full match for our beloved portfolio colours 

• White
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Red
• Black

but close enough. A perfect solution for the tormenting challenge many of us are facing every day: what to brew? 

   

One may count purple as white or just drink a purple tea if not into whites. Or decide to drink a white tea only when the die lands on a white corner, this would be option seven then... 

While the above is certainly a nice gimmick, in realitea I often use 12 or 20-sided dice spin down-dice (not shown in the photo, that one only has ten sides). I like using dice as an aid to easily keep track of the numbers of steepings which may easily range north of ten, depending on the tea type.

In case you'd like to give it a try, I suggest you pay attention to the prefix spindown or countdown, often sold as D12 or D20. Spindown means the next figure you want to show on top is always next to the current one and not on the opposite side as in regular dice and also the one in the photo above. Nothing more distracting than having to search for numbers on a die when trying to relax.

Give it a try: Alea iactanda est.   ⚪🟡🟢🔵🔴⚫🟣

Pagoda Poem translated into German

Many of you may know the Pagoda Poem by Yuan Zhen, an 8th century Tang Dynasty poet. If not the words, at least its look is quite iconic:

茶。

香叶，嫩芽。

慕诗客，爱僧家。

碾雕白玉，罗织红纱。

铫煎黄蕊色，碗转曲尘花。

夜后邀陪明月，晨前独对朝霞。

洗尽古今人不倦，将知醉后岂堪夸。

元稹

I took the liberty of translating it into German while keeping the visual structure, intending to make it sound more crisp and modern. In case you got a decent command of German, you might want to switch to the German version of this blog, as I am not posting it here.

I hope you may like it.

Tea Talk with Shernelle

Did you also happen to notice how many podcasts exist that claim to be about tea? 

Sounds too good to be true and in fact, it is not all good. Well, maybe the podcasts are decent, only many of those rather talk about all other things but tea, while the host and guests are drinking tea. This is just fine with me, but not what I would be looking or rather listening after.

I met Shernelle just about when she was starting her channel and was used as a guinea pig. In real life she is a British graphic designer who came to live in Germany by chance years ago and got into podcasting by corona, or so she says. 

So far she has interviewed a Korean born tea dealer, an Indian tea teacher, a German late night Pu'er drinking show host and, um... me. There is much more to come and I happen to know what she has planned for some future releases, so I decided to stay tuned. Curious to hear about the Hong Kong British lady working with tea farmers in Argentina, for example.

Shernelle is open to any tea, even if it does not come in bags - so let us stop making fun of British people. Shernelle does not discriminate any tea, but on the other hand we may risk hearing about tisanes or infusions too, as in "not Camellia sinensis"...  😱

Shernelle also practices Thai Boxing, so one really should not mess with her. Besides that, she is really nice and patient and as of now did not refuse any tea I have offered her so far. 

In case you got something to say about tea, why not talk to Shernelle, too - or simply join me in listening to her next episodes.

In case you are a member of the church of Steve (as in Jobs) like me, you may find her on Apple Podcasts. Also on Spotify, plus countless other options are listed on Buzzsprout.

Feels like Xmas! 🎄

Who does not know and cherish Babelcarp.org, the popular online tea lexicon for (almost) all things about Chinese tea for the past 20 years?

And for many years, despite all my adoration, I have suffered from the, to say the least, moderate response time. A speedy Babelcarp was right on top of my virtual wish list.

Finally, my dream came true, 🎅 Liu Po Ling 刘坡岭 has switched the reindeer  - just in time for the season. Have a look here.

For the geeks among us: my by no means representative user tests have shown a reduction of the average response time per query from previously roughly 4 to now about 1 second. 

For the non-technicians among us: response time has been reduced by approximately 75%.

The Tea Commandments

Fret not thyselves, my fellow tea lovers, this ain't about religion and also there is no typo in the header. 

The below are just some thoughts on general hospitalitea and the fake religious headline was just for clickbaiting. I only intend to share some ideas on how to get the most pleasure out of a tea session with friends and acquaintances. Whilst one may not need to bother much about existing tea friends (cause you already know them, right?), it might be a bit harder to convert mere acquaintances into long time tea friends - in case that is the objective.    

One's home should be one's castle. Or teahouse at least. Meaning whoever owns a place and invites guests for a cuppa or twenty should be in ones rights to define house rules. Or does that sound strange? Well, it certainly does to me and I would never have thought about such before I started to have very frequent meetings with my local TeaNuts 🍵🥜 posse but also with numerous individuals. 

I am still convinced that there is enough decency in the world* and some basic conventions** do apply globally, like the guest mirroring the hosts behavior, e.g. as a guest to be waiting for a handshake to be offered by the receiving host or rather copy the greeting bow 🙏 - and some of us even being prepared for the reciprocate the Vulcan greeting 🖖 meaning "live long and prosper", but also to ask - if not clearly indicated - whether one is supposed to remove their shoes before entering.

That said, the below are not my house rules or anyone's I drink tea with, but over time we developed kind of a common understanding of how we can best enjoy tea. This is also no unanimous declaration everyone in my group would fully support, but there are at least a couple of common denominators I feel safe to say everyone with a decent love for tea might agree to or at least understand.

So, here they come, the rules or rather suggestions I might bother a potential newbie to the group with and some reasoning in italics below each one:

- If invited, kindly RSVP and indicate around which time the host may expect you. You may check in any time you like and you are free to leave whenever you feel tea drunk - or bored.

This is because my regular group does not always meet at the same place or time and although we may plan in advance, sometimes we do meet quite spontaneously. Also, as on average a session takes about eight hours (sic!), it cannot be taken for granted that everyone is willing and/or able to attend for the whole nine teas*** - or more. Knowing in advance when a seat a the table might be vacated again allows for adding substitutes for later arrival to the guest list. 

- No need to bring anything except love for tea; not even tea is needed, we all have and share in abundance, but any dealer or collector is of course free expected to share.

This is about not putting economical pressure on anyone and also intended to make newcomers feel comfortable. Of course our thirst is never satisfied but still: no pressure. Yet... 

IF you want to bring/share some leaves from your vault, great. But do not be frustrated in case the majority decides not to select your favorites this time. Happens to all of us.

As a host, whenever you have a clear agenda/menu you would like to offer, let the members/visitors know in advance so they are aware if it is going to be a motto tea party or there is some flexibility. In case of the former, no one else needs to bother bringing tea themselves.

- Once you enter another one's home, please use the bathroom and wash your hands with soap. 

Quite obvious, right? Not only in 2020. We all do it (when/where possible) before having meals and here one may even have to touch the holy plant (no, my fellow Rastafarians, not THAT plant) and prepare some delicacies for the others. 

- Please do not wear any strong perfume, body lotion or deodorant and ideally try not to cuddle with your animals too much before visiting. In case you are a smoker, kindly join us in a fresh set of clothing and refrain from having cigarette breaks.

Well, especially in the summer there might be good reasons to actually use deodorants, but rumors are there are even some w/o added perfume in the market. Alas, few people seem to know that. I would even go as far as suggest not to wear lipstick, at least if one intend to truly taste the tea. Also bear in mind that many people suffer from various allergies and even if they do not immediately suffocate while sitting/sipping, say, next to a cat-owner, they might enjoy the session more with their mucous membranes not clogged. 

In layman's terms: every smell might distract from the tea, so please avoid them.

- No food is guaranteed to be provided, however there are the occasional (unsalted) nuts or almonds offered on the house and everyone is free to bring snacks, but we can well do without them.

To be honest, after six or eight hours and planning to continue for a while I sometimes offer a light snack and we may even have ordered the occasional pizza sometimes, but this certainly does not benefit one's taste buds. On the other hand, one may doubt if after 20 different teas or so the taste buds are able to distinguish much anyway. Clearly nibbling nuts and such also does not enhance ones olfactory or taste senses (especially not before sampling nutty green teas or Xingren Xiang) and that is why it is not a strange idea to rinse ones mouth with non-sparkling water after nibbling or even between teas. Actually, this is the preferable way, depending on the level of severity when drinking.

- As soon as at least one non-native speaker joins the session it, we all switch to English.

Given that all others have a decent command of English. Otherwise we do as in Babylon****.

- Guest slippers available upon request

Many cultures expect you to remove your shoes when entering their homes (or bathrooms). That's why they offer slippers to their guests. That's for hygienic reasons if people do not wear socks but also some homes are not equipped with floor heating. Offering slippers to guests is a nice way to show hospitality, imho.

By all means, the above are thoughts, ideas and if you like suggestions that come from experience. We only bother potential drinking guests with some of the above when they might be considered prospects for permanent membership. Not that there is such a thing, but in order to focus and the main subject it is good to have the bases covered. Discussions should only be heated when it is about tea, at most. 

You may now think of me as bourgeois (which is fine, there is freedom of opinion where I live) and I would much prefer if some of the above would go without saying. Luckily, it often does.

Keep sippin'...

* Certainly not thinking about some current political discussions, fooliticians or events

** Suggested reading: Kiss, Bow, Or Shake Hands 

*** Ok, bad pun around "whole nine yards", also in most cases we drink more than nine different teas. Furthermore, the eight teas had better music...

**** Translate individually, that is. Wow, another rasta/reggae related thought in here - what was I drinking?

The German Teasearch Institute

Honestly, what do you think about when you hear the term "German tea"? Well, for about 30+ years my prioritization regarding that train of thought went more or less like this:  

1. Frisian blend* (Ostfriesenmischung) - what my fellow countrymen (m/f/d) first drank in the North-western German region of Easter Frisia, close to the Netherlands - and the North Sea. 
2. Asian tea imported and blended and/or repackaged by merchants of the German Hanseatic League for distribution across continental Europe.
3. Comic euphemism for beer.

At least that was what I attributed German tea with up until about five years ago when I briefly read about a couple which supposedly ran a little tea garden called Tschanara in the village Odenthal-Scheuren (about 20km away from the Cologne Cathedral). Soon after noticing, I already had forgotten about them. I mean, seriously, tea from Germany? Arrogance is bliss, or is it?

While writing my recent book on tea and sampling 1,000+ different teas from 70+ vendors and about two dozen tea growing countries, it never occurred to me to check up on German tea. Guilty as charged, I could have know.

The location

The tea garden lies in a region called Bergisches Land and its produce is called Bergischer Hochlandtee (High mountain tea) which is quite a bold naming. The garden's elevation is 213m (just south of 700ft) which is not exactly "high mountain", but then why is the region called "Bergisch" (mountainous)? There is an easy answer to this question, the former Duchy got its name from the Counts of Berg. But mountains - not that many! Anyhow, the region's highest elevation is 519m and thus it "legally" qualifies as a highland region. So Tschanara called its produce Highland tea in English. Furthermore, the founding couple told me they both fancy Whiskey from certain European highlands, so probably they just cannot get the highlands out of their heads - or palates.

Pubilimba variety in the Tschanara greenhouse ©Tschanara Teagarden

How it began

In the mid-eighties the German Wolfgang Bucher met his future wife Haeng ok Kim while visiting the Ssanggyesa temple in Korea. Being both into tea, they often brought tea seeds back to Germany when traveling in Asia and soon started planting them on half an acre of land more than 20 years ago. Doesn't that happen to all of us? One brings home a flower seedling, plants it in the yard and ends up with about the size of a soccer field full of them. Happens all the time, doesn't it?

Although Wolfgang Bucher has been working in crop sciences, the couple always considered Tschanara as a hobby, so here is a spoiler alert: do not try ordering tea from the Tschanara shop. They do not sell tea - yet. Although this might change in the distant future, they currently run the occasional workshop or tasting session as a hobby project and may be approached regarding these. Also, in case you just cannot stop yourselves from starting a tea garden on your own, you may ask them to sell you some seeds in bulk at what appears way below cost to me. Again, do not bother them for a handful, but if you really own land (not just a garden) and you are serious, they might part with a couple of hundreds of seeds or seedlings every year.  

The goal

Tschanara has been given three major goals:

1. Quality optimization in producing green, oolong, and black (red) tea.
2. Selecting and breeding the best cultivars for the above purpose.
3. Breeding cultivars with better frost and drought resistance.

Whilst the climate is mostly mild, there is the occasional frost in the winter with temperatures as low as -15°C, but as long as the roots are being covered with straw so they do not freeze, the plants do not suffer. The leaves might, but this can be managed by determining the ideal time of pruning and such.

Thanks to global warming, frost will very likely become less of an issue in this region, but also due to global warming, water will make itself scarce. Tschanara plans to be prepared.

What Tschanara really is

Why is a tea garden not selling tea? The answer is both easy and rather complex. You can probably imagine how much work it is to plant and care for hundreds of different varieties and cultivars in one garden. I suppose no regular tea farmer would go to these extremes, they rather need to focus on a couple of cultivars in order to produce market-ready amounts of certain teas. Also, the Tschanara owners meticulously study each plant and focus on breeding the plants most resistent to diseases and adapting best to the local climate, terroir, microbiota. Good taste is of course desirable when selecting plants for further use and also breeding for high yield would be an important goal, but first things first. By the way, almost all the Japanese high yield Yabukita** cultivar plants Tschanara had have died by now, not making mass production any easier. 

Calling Tschanara a mere tea garden is a bold understatement, if you ask me. I rather see it as a privately run and financed tea research institute***. Their seeds and sometimes seedlings hail from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and many more countries and they do not stop at growing Camellia sinensis var. sinensis and var. assamica, but also do var. formosensis or var. pubilimba etc. Whoever tasted tea made of var. taliensis (quite common in teas from Yunnan) will certainly know how diverse the flavor profile might appear in different varieties.

I bet there are less than a handful places outside Asia and East Africa where you may find such a vast collection of different tea plants, but I will keep looking.

The 2019 harvest did yield a total of less than six kilograms of finished tea and Mrs. Kim had to manually produce more than 125 micro-batches. Obviously, one can hardly put a price tag on that or, in other words, the fair price per gram would currently need to be in the range of the world's finest teas.

Cut to the taste

Patience, young Padawan, I am just getting to that. Originally I intended to only write about the tasting experience, but then I reconsidered. I think it makes little sense to squeeze the tasting notes of 25 teas (of all colors, by the way) in here or throw a table of tea names towards you that you may never ever be able to acquire yourselves. There is no guarantee that Mrs. Kim will use material from a certain bush or group of bushes again next year; and if she does, she may rather produce another kind of tea next year from said material - plus it would not be for sale anyway. Therefore I decided to rather give you a summary of highlights and lowlights (if any).

I did a decent number of tastings on my own, but also shared some with my local TeaNuts posse. One of the teas we sampled was a 2019 Heicha (Sheng-style), made with a Taiwanese large leaf variety. I've got three more Heicha to check, so this is just an interim judgement, also this one did not yet have the chance to develop much postfermented aroma. 

I usually do not write about tea that I did not like and rather keep quiet, but in this case I need to state that the owners did not even want to get me any of their Heicha because they are still in trial stage themselves for now. They finally agreed to provide me with some of these in order to shut me up, I guess.  😁 

So what was "wrong" with this 2019 Sheng? Nothing much, but we thought it might have been a little flaw in the Sha Qing or kill-green process. Although the visual appearance was like a 10+ year old Sheng, it rather tasted like Mao Cha with little aroma and just a little bitterness - need to try again in a couple of years, I guess.

Mini Sheng style Heicha (45g)

There also was a Zairai (Japanese, planted in 2001) where the dry leaves smelled like Pepsi and the soup a bit like Jin Jun Mei, overall promising more than delivering. Maybe a little bit more oxidation would have been beneficial - just guessing here. Still, whilst a bit weak in taste, it was absolutely okay but not best of breed.

We also had two of the green ones in our recent TeaNuts session, a Sayamakaori (Japanese cultivar, planted in 2001) and a Chaerejeong (Korean seeds, planted in 2013). Not owning steaming equipment one can only achieve so much when trying to create Japanese-like tea taste, and this probably wasn't even Mrs. Kim's intention. Still, the Sayamakaori was to my absolute liking, clearly tasting "Japanese" and easy on the tongue. The group was fine with it, but then the Chaerejeong really rocked! More relaxed, more self-aware, much better and even a fourth steeping still put something into the cups - it does not have to hide behind a Sparrow's Tongue from Korea. 

Mrs. Kim being from Korea, one may say "quelle surprise",  but she had no formal training in tea production, all her skills are self-taught and her limited equipment and the need to mainly produce micro-batches makes the quality she comes up with even more admirable.

Green tea made in Germany

Two white (assamica) teas (one from Nantou, Taiwan and the other one a blend from Burmese and Laotian bushes,  seeds planted in 2016 and 2017, respectively) were also sampled and appeared absolutely market-ready. Nothing to complain - the former very strong, the latter not that much. As I am more into aged but fresh white teas, I would love to taste them again after at least five or seven years of aging, but the minute samples won't even live to see the next month.

White tea made in Germany

And the winner is...

The love song Coldplay supposedly made about Gwyneth Paltrow could well have been the background music for the session's highlight: Yellow. The leaves we already tasted in green had also been made into yellow tea. While I occasionally enjoy the very special taste of high quality yellow teas, I did not expect too much here, especially knowing that some shady tea manufactures still try selling improperly made green as yellow tea.

The Japanese cultivar provided a decent cup, well rounded and delicate, but the genetically Korean Chaerejeong (produced in the slightly different Hwangcha-style) blew all of us off our feet. The unanimous decision was that this was the best yellow tea any of us ever had. Dried flower on top of fresh hay, sweet cotton candy and lychee were just some of our observations. I rated it at three stars in my personal tea database (with three being the highest rating), think Nadia Comăneci or Bo Derek (perfect tens in their respective fields). Wow! 

Yellow tea made in Germany

To summarize, I think what Mrs. Kim is able to produce is just amazing. The top batches could easily be offered at north of one Euro per gram.

What else?

It is certainly worth mentioning that Tschanara has never used chemical fertilizers or pesticides, which gives the avid drinker an even better feeling and also lets the teas taste a little similar to others from organic or pesticide-free farms. You know what I mean, don't you? A bit less strong, a little more subtle, sometimes like missing a bit of power while on the other hand appearing more relaxed. Really nice. Even more so as we only made it halfway through the samples, so there is more to steep. Yummy!

Of course one may visit the Cathedral when stopping by in Cologne, but there are options now...

* Think of it as of something similar to English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh breakfast tea, only more befitting the local water quality and taste preferences of the Frisians.

** The most dominant cultivar used in Japan.

*** Humble as the owners appear, they are not calling themselves that. They do not study the plants in a lab or examine their genetic codes, but certainly go beyond pure farming.