We have second home in Hong Kong where my husband is based for his work. Very typically Hong Kong, apartments are not very spacious. The only thing that makes up for ours is the gorgeous harbor view. I don’t mind the small space as much but what I miss is a fully equipped kitchen. However, when there’s a will, there’s a way and it’s amazing how I have managed to entertain friends in a squishy kitchen and shock horror, with no oven!

Well, we had friends over and I was wondering what to do for dessert, especially without an oven! I dug around in the pantry. I thought why not crepes suzette? They are not hard and I don’t need an oven - all I need is a frying pan. But then I thought, why have only a couple of crepes, why not a stack of them?!

I had some lovely matcha powder which I bought in Japan recently and I also had some white coverture chocolate which I wanted to use up. I decided to make a matcha crepe cake with white chocolate cream - much more creative than crepes suzette! And…. our friends loved it!

So here’s the recipe. It’s not very difficult to make either and all you need is a good 16cm non stick frypan and a set of electric whisks.

This recipe makes about 16 to 20 crepes but you may not need all of them. Some of them may not turn out well and you won’t be able to use it for the cake. We had the leftovers the traditional way with a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar - simply delicious !

RECIPE

WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM

Makes about 2 cups and prepare this a day in advance

Ingredients

120 gm white chocolate buttons
3/4 cup cream
3 tablespoon water
A pinch of salt (to cut the sweetness)

Put the chocolate in a medium bowl
Boil the cream and water to a simmer in a saucepan and pour over the chocolate. Let stand for 30 seconds, then stir well with a whisk until all the chocolate buttons have melted. Add a pinch of salt
Let cool
Cover with cling wrap and make sure the cling wrap is touching the surface of the cream. This helps to prevent moisture from building up and you won’t have a nice texture if water gets into the cream.
Refrigerate for at least several hours, or until completely chilled (I like to leave it overnight, and it can be prepared to this point up to 4 days ahead).

CREPES

Ingredients

4 Eggs
185g cake flour, sifted
15g Green tea powder, sifted
50g Sugar
2g Salt
70g Melted butter
500ml Milk
cooking oil spray
2 punnets fresh strawberries, sliced vertically. Keep one or two whole strawberry for decoration on the top

Beat the eggs in a bowl just to break the eggs up
Add the sifted cake flour and green tea powder and mix with a whisk until it is well combined
Add sugar, salt and mix. Add melted butter and mix
Finally add the milk, mix and sieve to make sure there are no lumps
Leave the batter in the fridge for 30~60 minutes
Spray the cooking oil onto the pan and pour one ladle of thin batter into the pan. Turn the pan to thin it and turn it over when the air bubble comes up.
Stack the crepes and let them cool down
Once they have cooled down, I use a 16 cm cake ring to make sure that all the crepes are of the same diameter. If they aren’t, trim the crepes using the cake ring as a guide

TO ASSEMBLE

Whip the cream with an electric mixer until it reaches a soft peak. Do not over-whip. The cream will be grainy and not smooth if it is over-whipped
With a small off set spatula, spread the white chocolate cream onto on crepe. Stack 4 pieces repeatedly, then put strawberries on the fourth crepe and cover with cream. Repeat 2 times.
Place the crepe on top of the last layer with a thin layer of white chocolate cream and garnish with whole strawberries. Another option is to sprinkle with matcha powder and decorate with a couple of whole strawberries. If the latter, sprinkle the matcha powder only just before serving as the powder will be absorbed into the crepe very quickly