Serves 6

2 cups water
3 sachets Four O’Clock Lychee Ginger White Tea
6 firm Asian, Barlett or Bosc pears
¾ cup sugar
One 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced
Peel of half lemon and half orange
1 cup whipping cream
2 sachets Four O’Clock Chocolate Spice Tea
1 tsp maple syrup
½ cup low fat French vanilla yogurt (optional)

In a saucepan bring the water to a boil, more from heat and add the Four O’Clock Lychee Ginger White Tea sachets and steep for 5 minutes. Peel the pears. Place the tea, sugar, ginger and peels into a saucepan large enough to hold the pears in a single layer.

Over medium heat bring the mixture to boiling point, or until the sugar has dissolved. Reduce heat to simmer, add the pears and cook for about 20 to 30 minutes, turning occasionally to evenly cook. Remove from heat then allow pears to cool in syrup, cover and refrigerate.

To make infused cream, in a small saucepan, add the whipping cream and bring to boiling point. Remove from heat and add the Four O’Clock Chocolate Spice tea sachets and steep for 10 to 15 minutes or until fragrant. Squeeze out sachets and discard. Cover and refrigerate until cold. Pour into a chilled mixing bowl, add maple syrup and whip until stiff peaks. Fold in yogurt, if using, until well mixed.

To assemble, remove pears from poaching liquid, drain well, and place one in a chilled serving dish. Drizzle each with some of the poaching liquid and garnish with dollops of the cream.

Option: the poaching liquid can be reduced by simmering, to make a thicker syrup.

Brief Bio:

Nathan has been an award-winning food stylist for print and film advertising for the past 24 years and is an internationally published food and travel journalist. He currently is celebrating his 21st  year on Global BCTV News with his Saturday Chefs and Fong on Food segments, and has been a regular contributor to Canada’s public radio network, CBC Radio One as well as a food columnist for The Vancouver Sun and regular contributor to Taste Magazine and EAT Magazine. In addition he has worked for Enroute, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Light, Men’s Health UK, Cooking Light and NUVO.

His other television segments have included working with NBC’s The Today Show during the 2010 Winter Olympics, BBC and Sky Television, The Discovery Channel, both from England as well as the Food Network, USA and Canada, and New Zealand and Japan TV. He received the silver medal for the 2009 Food Network Challenge in the Superstar Foodstylist Competition.

In 2002 he was selected as one of the “Top 10 Food Trend-setters of the Future in Canada” by the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail Newspaper and was the recipient of the inaugural IACP/Julia Child Award of Excellence for food styling in 1998. In 2006 he was nominated for the national Gemini Awards (Humanitarian) for his dedicated work with the Dr. Peter Centre, the Vancouver hospice for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Level: Easy

This recipe post all started with a single question from my sister, ‘hey, do you want green tea cake?’ Cake, of course I’d say yes to cake. I thought she was referring to a cake she bought from a store, until I asked her why she’s reaching for butter and eggs from the fridge. Cool! Fresh cake.

I’m not a big matcha fan, so I didn’t have high expectation for the cake, but it turned out to be pretty tasty. It was moist, sweet, with just enough matcha flavor. It was really good with coffee. The 1 loaf of cake that she made was gone pretty quickly, so I convinced her to make a couple more later that day. Luckily she did, and here’s the recipe for this awesome matcha cake!

Cooking Time: 45 mins including prep.

Serving: 1 loaf

2 large eggs
1 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tbs matcha powder
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method:

Preheat oven to 340 degrees F.

Cream the butter in a mixing bowl, add sugar and mix well. Beat eggs in a separate bowl. Gradually add the beaten egg into the butter and sugar mix. Sift flour, baking powder and matcha together. Add the dry ingredients into the egg mixture and mix well.

Put the mixed cake batter in a cake pan, and bake for approximately 30 minutes.

Note: I thought the cake was yummy, however it was a tad too sweet for me. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, it’d be a good idea to adjust the amount of sugar for the recipe.

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Ingredients:

Pretty simple eh? Yup it is. We also got a few tips from Swiss Bakery, but we only used one of their tips.

Anyways I bought the bread the day before because the bread should be a little bit harder. Not too fresh, but I forgot to remove it from the plastic bag, so the moisture didn’t escape. Oh well, after cubing the bread, which I think were a little bit too big, we used Swiss Bakery tip #1: We placed it in on a baking sheet and toasted the bread in the oven to dry it out a bit.

While toasting we started making the “pudding” part. It was pretty simple. We cracked the eggs and put it into a bowl, and added the whip cream, milk, and sugar. We whisked it together until it was smooth and the sugar was mixed in with the milk and eggs. We modified the recipe a bit too by using 1% milk instead of whole milk, which I think is 3.25%. After the bread was slightly toasted it we put it in a baking dish. We also added some raisins, which weren’t in the original recipe. We should’ve put more. The milk and egg mixture was then poured on top. We let the bread soak for a few minutes, and then rotated and mixed the bread around so that they were all able to soak in the milk and eggs. After one turn, we covered it in saran wrap and then placed it in the fridge for an hour.

After letting it sit an hour, we took it out and again mixed the pudding, and also pressed down on the bread so that it was for surely covered.  We then placed it in the oven and baked it for 40 minutes. Swiss Bakery tip #2 was to place the baking dish in a water bath. Unfortunately I didn’t have another ovensafe dish that was high enough to put water in and place the bread pudding in. While baking we made the sauce, which was really easy too. Just combine all the ingredients and let it simmer. Keep stirring so that the corn starch doesn’t clump up.

Now here’s where the problem begins. My oven seemed to have crapped out because it wasn’t that hot. It turned it on for a bit, but when I tried to broil the top, it wouldn’t turn on. Now the bread pudding was cooked, and I tested it with a tooth pick and it came out clean. But I wanted to broil the top so that it would be nice and crispy.

The bread pudding was pretty good, though it was all pretty soft. Even though it was just a small list of ingredients, the milk, sugar, egg, and bread was really good. I’m sure it would be a lot better if we could ‘ve had a crispy topping. I also think it would be better with a bit of vanilla extract and vanilla bean. The amaretto sauce was also excellent. The one thing I didn’t like was the crust, it was a bit too hard for me. A bit hard to chew. Although good fresh, it unfortunately wasn’t very good a day after. The pieces with crust were very tough to chew.

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