Japanese Green Tea Tiramisu Goodness

Everyone and their dog in the London blogosphere reviewed the new food-only Japan Centre when it opened. And they all went on about how great it is. Now, to be completely honest with you ... Japanese (and Korean, and Thai) supermarkets make me a little uncomfortable. All those packets of unidentifiable things labelled in undecipherable script, which could be dried octopus poo or maybe fermented leaves of some stinky plant coated in catfish jelly? Of course, it could also be something yummy, but I feel so lost. And the problem doesn't end there. Once you figure out what's inside the packet, you still need to ask: Just what do you do with it? Chop it or eat whole? Boil it or eat raw, fry it or steam it, and are you supposed to mix it with something (with what?) ...?

One thing I do understand is tea. Not much can go wrong with tea. Unless, like my friend M. you try to mix green tea with milk. ("Ewwwww, idiot! What were you thinking?") But then he explained to me about powdered green tea and how it's used to make milkshakes and cakes and ice cream. It's called matcha, it's very expensive (although it prevents cancer, so possibly worth it) and M. couldn't get hold of it in Dubai where he lives, so he tried making a latte with ordinary green tea. (It doesn't work; don't try it.)

The curious mind I am, some serious research into this powdered green tea thing needed to be done -- and that's when I came across the Quaint Living blog, which is a wonderful soul-pleasing journal about homemade this, homemade that and everything else I am not (starting with the word quaint). Quaint? Are you having a laugh, I am a neurotic city woman and I have thingstodo!!!

Aaaanyways, apart from giving an idiot-proof soy matcha latte recipe complete with photos, Alice of Quaint Living also reviewed the Okashi cookery book. There is a photo of this velvety green tea tiramisu in it, which I couldn't get out of my mind for so long that I finally made a trip to the scary Japan Centre and procured both their ready-made green tea tiramisu (complete with a little heart on top, how cute!) and a packet of matcha so that I could later attempt to make some tiramisu myself.

Here are the photos -- first up, store-bought tiramisu:

And now the one I made, with a self-invented recipe consisting of sponge fingers soaked in coffee, melted Betty Crocker chocolate fudge cake icing for pretty streaks, mascarpone sweetened with honey, powdered green tea and almond flakes on top. Cute, no? I continue to dearly love the fact that I can just decide to eat any food from any country and because I'm in London, I can have it. It wouldn't be wise to make a habit of eating this tiramisu regularly though, mostly because mascarpone is like 90% pure fat. *Shock horror*