Matcha Lavender Crepe Cake

The subtle bitterness of the matcha is tempered by the light lavender flavour in this simple cake. A crepe cake/mille feuille sounds intimidating but is easier than expected, yielding light and tender results. It’s a little time consuming, but completely worth it.

This Matcha Lavender Crepe Cake was born out of a simple request. The NSSSO and a good friend of ours are born on the same day. Every year, they alternate who gets to pick what their birthday cake is. The request was something that had either a green tea or lavender flavour, neither of these flavours were something I had any experience in. I played around with a lot of variations, could I make a cake? A brownie-like thing (matcha bites were born from this)? So many questions, so little time.

Ambitiously, I decided to combine the two and make a crepe cake even though I had never tried it out before. I made version after version, but because it’s for the NSSSO, I couldn’t get him to taste test, so that was fun. Learning the difference between culinary matcha and lavender was the beginning of this adventure. I took my long-standing crepe recipe and began playing around with the ratio of the existing ingredients and the matcha powder. I consulted a lot of websites and recipes before basing the cream off of the one on grow forage cook ferment and modified the sweetness until it complemented the matcha.

Learning how to make a crepe cake was also a challenge. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out that it needed to rest in the fridge for the flavours to meld and for the cake to hold together. Now that I think of it, how else would it have held given the “glue” was cream. But again, trial and error was the method I chose and well, I’m just glad the errors eventually became less and the successes more. I am not known for detail work, making something pretty is EXTREMELY out of my wheelhouse. “I can build a foundation and you can make it pretty” is usually the way I roll. But how can I disappoint? This dessert, like all French desserts I guess, is known for being delicate, so I had to treat it that way too when assembling.

The first assembly yielded a hill, where the sides sloped down. This was because I didn’t spread the cream evenly enough. The second assembly had a lot of ugly edges (which I chose to show off today), which taught me trimming would be beneficial if I couldn’t make my crepes the same size or perfectly round. The third assembly taught me patience, as the crepes needed to cool or else, I’d have melted cream everywhere. Each assembly taught me something new and I couldn’t tell you how many times I tried (haha).

The result is the recipe below, I may still play with it here and there, but the basis of it is pretty much here.

Again, if you gather all your ingredients now, that will make the process move that much faster and be that much smoother.

We make the Lavender Cream first. In a pot, add your cream and stir in the lavender. Heat the cream but make sure it doesn’t boil. Once the cream is warm, take the pot off heat and cool to room temperature.

Once cooled, strain the mixture through a sieve. Cover with plastic wrap, make sure the plastic wrap is touching the top of the cream so that no skin forms. Refrigerate till cold.

I would make the crepes at the same time as the cream is cooling, just so you don’t have to wait for the crepes to cool enough to start assembly.

In a large mixing bowl, add flour, sugar, matcha powder, oil, milk, and eggs. Mix until blended, this might be a bit difficult as the matcha clumps and it looks like it’ll never mix into the mixture. A way to prevent this is to probably to sift the dry ingredients, but alas, I’m lazy.

Once the batter is mixed, time to cook. Managing the heat of the pan is the hard part when it comes to crepes (how I wish I owned a griddle). I usually start at medium to low heat and adjust as I cook. The first two to three crepes are generally throwaways, but you should know at about what temperature you want your pan to be at by now or adjust as you go of course.

My pan was quite large, so I ladled the batter into the pan twice. I could probably get away with doing it only once, but I was worried about the size of the pan, so I doubled it. In any case, once the edges are dry and start peeling away from the pan it is ready to flip. Once you flip it, I usually give it another 30 seconds to a minute (when a little colour forms) then remove it from the pan. Once you’re done cooking all the crepes, cool. This is why I make it at the same time as the cream so that they can both be cool when I work with it the next day.

Once everything is cooled, we can start beating the cream. At this point, remove the cream from the fridge and get rid of the plastic wrap. I like to start whipping (with either a hand mixer or a stand mixer) before adding the sugar and vanilla. Once it thickens a bit, add the sugar and vanilla slowly and then turn up the speed to high. Make sure to keep an eye on it, the line between whipped cream and butter is super thin so check the thickness occasionally, to make sure you’re achieving what you want.

Now we build the cake. Go through the stack and find the nicest crepe that will be your top. Transfer the first crepe to the cake round or serving plate/platter as you won’t want to move this cake after. Layer on a good amount of cream and spread it out as evenly as possible. Repeat till you’ve achieved the height you want, or you run out of crepes or cream. Once you’re done building the cake, refrigerate overnight to set the cake.