Earthy green tea matcha and toasty black sesame batters are swirled to make a slightly sweet and denser loaf cake that is a perfect year-round baking project.
By Natasha Steinberg
Summer is winding down. So naturally I made something that requires heating the oven and that involves no berries, cherries, or stone fruit. I often feel like I need to bake exactly with the season, but that leaves me in quite the predicament when what I want is something totally different. Sometimes I want peach pie in December or pecan pie in August. 
Several months ago, I became obsessed with mochi ice cream from our international grocery store. I particularly loved the green tea and the black sesame flavors. The green tea was so earthy and refreshing, and I loved the toasty flavor of the black sesame. And those colors! So baking with them was sort of a no brainer.
Rather than make one batter and halve it, as with most marble cakes, I just made two separate batters. This makes for dirtying more bowls than I normally like, but I preferred this method to ensure I had even amounts of each batter and that the batters didn’t end up overmixed. Worth it.
This cake is somewhere between a quick bread and a pound cake in texture and taste. The sesame and matcha really work perfectly together, and the marbling ensures the perfect amount of swirled and separated bites.
PrintMatcha and Black Sesame Swirl Pound Cake
Description
Earthy matcha and toasty sesame batters are swirled to make a slightly sweet and denser loaf cake that is a perfect year-round baking project.
Ingredients
Matcha Batter
- 115 g (3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp) white flour
- 12 g (1 1/2 Tbsp) matcha (found here)
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 2 eggs
- 56 g (1/4 cup) grapeseed oil
- 125 g (1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp) cane sugar
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) light coconut milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
Black Sesame Batter
- 115 g (3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp) white flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 2 eggs
- 56 g (1/4 cup) grapeseed oil
- 30 g (1 1/2 Tbsp) black sesame tahini (found here)
- 125 g (1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp) cane sugar
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) light coconut milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease an 8x4x3 loaf pan and line with parchment, leaving overhang on the long sides.
- In two separate bowls, whisk together flour, matcha, baking powder, and salt in one and flour, baking powder, and salt in the other. In another two separate bowls, whisk together eggs, oil, sugar, milk, and vanilla in one and eggs, oil, tahini, sugar, milk, and vanilla in the other. Stir dry matcha ingredients into wet plain ingredients and dry plain ingredients into wet sesame ingredients just until combined.
- Using an ice cream scoop, alternate scoops of batter over the bottom of the pan. Repeat, scooping matcha batter on top of sesame batter, until all of the batter is used up. (I ended up with four scoops across and four layers of batter.) Take a knife and swirl through the batter from the top left corner in a large zig zag pattern then repeat in the opposite direction. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in pan for 15 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool completely.
- Category: Baking, Cake
Couldn’t not come here and leave a comment about how great the cake is, the black sesame part is so delicious, very similar in taste with a very appreciated turkish sweet – halva…and I’m going to repeat again, an absolutely finger-licking recipe…thank you a lot or sharing it, it’s already saved in my best recipes’ library :)))
Hello, can we substitute coconut milk with other milks like Almond/soy?