Matcha Cake with Coconut Cream

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the vegetable oil. Use a hand mixer to combine the oil with the dry ingredients until they are evenly coated and no dry pockets of flour remain. The texture should be like wet sand. Add the wet ingredients mixture and beat on low speed just until combined. Do not over mix.

Pour the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans.

Bake for 23-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cakes. Cool for 20-30 minutes in the pan before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely. If using the Bake‘n Fill pan, cool the dome in the pan.

In a medium bowl, vigorously whisk together egg yolks and cornstarch until the mixture has lightened in color, about 2 minutes.

Bring the coconut milk to a boil in a medium saucepan. Once it boils, remove from the heat. Wait 3 minutes.

Slowly dribble ¼ cup of the warm milk into the egg yolk cornstarch mixture while whisking constantly. Continue whisking and dribbling in the rest of the milk slowly until it is all in. Add the bloomed water gelatin mixture and whisk to combine.

Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and heat over medium-low, whisking constantly, until it thickens. This can take 3-5+ minutes. Be careful not to let it boil (come to 212°F) as gelatin loses its strength at this temperature. It should be able to coat the back of a spoon.

Once desired thickness is reached, remove from the heat and pour the mixture over the white chocolate in the heat proof bowl. Stir to melt the chocolate completely. Emulsify the mixture with an immersion blender*** until the pastry cream is lighter in color, about 3-5 minutes.

Pour the pastry cream on a sheet pan, optionally on top of a silicone baking mat. Spread it thin, and cover completely with plastic wrap, letting it touch all of the cream to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate for 45 minutes or until completely cool.

If using a Bake‘n Fill pan, pour the cream directly into the cavity of the cake, cover with the bottom layer of cake and chill the entire cake for at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

Color the buttercream, as desired. I set aside 1 cup of plain buttercream for garnishing, then I used 1 teaspoon of butterfly pea powder to color the rest of mine.

Put a small dollop of the buttercream on a serving plate or board (this will help the cake stick and not slide around). Place the first layer of cake on top. Pipe a tall, thick dam of buttercream around the top edge of the cake to keep the cream in. Fill with coconut cream. Place the second layer of cake on top.

Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of the buttercream to create a crumb coat to seal in any crumbs. Freeze for 5-10 minutes to seal this coating.

When the crumb coat is set, pipe or dollop more frosting around the outside. Spread evenly with an offset spatula before scraping down the outside edge with a bench scraper. You may need to do this several times to get a smooth look.

I found that keeping the bench scraper in a bowl of warm water before using it (drying it off in between) helped remove air bubbles on the outside and made smoothing even easier. If you need a visual on how to frost a traditional layer cake, check out this video. If you want in-depth instruction on frosting dome cakes, I highly recommend Bayou Saint Cake’s Dome Cakes for Everyone online course.

Garnish as desired. I piped large “bloops” of the plain white buttercream all over and then dusted a 1:1 mixture of matcha and powdered sugar over them.