Matcha tea chocolate ganache

Question

I have this nice recipe of chocolate-matcha pie in which the ganache is made in the following way.

1. boil 1dl milk with 2dl cream
2. add 50g sugar and let it melt
3. cut the fire and add 200g dark chocolate
4. mix well until chocolate is melted
5. wait 10min and add two eggs and mix well

The resulting ganache is then to be put inside an almost cooked dough, and then cooked for 20min at 150°C.

My problem is the following.

The original recipe said to add 1 ts of matcha tea powder at step 5.

The result is good but the flavor of matcha is weak, almost vanishing. I tried adding it at step 4, but same issue. I don't know if I should add more of matcha powder or what could be the problem.

Also : I am filtering the matcha before putting the ganache inside the pie. Obviously the taste would be stronger without this step but then I fear the consistency would be wasted by some lumps.

Answer 1

If the matcha powder has been adequately mixed/stirred in, it should pass through the strainer - on the other hand, if straining/filtering is not in the source recipe, perhaps you should concentrate on mixing throughly so that there are no lumps, and not strain.

As an additional possibility for weak flavor:

I'm always willing to guess (when things don't seem to come out right, especially) that at some point in the passage of any recipe involving teaspoons and Tablespoons some transcriber might have misinterpreted some prior writer's Tablespoon (T, Ts, Tbs, 15 ml) as a teaspoon (t, ts, tsp, 5 ml) or vice versa.

Answer 2

I think adding the matcha at step 4 makes good sense, not step 5. Matcha flavor is best extracted in the range between 75-80°C, any higher than that and you can damage the flavor, but a lot less than that and you won't extract the flavor from the powder effectively. Adding matcha to boiling milk isn't a great idea, but adding it after the chocolate has cooled it down some is the right way to go, although maybe it's dropping the temperature too much. You could add chocolate until the temperature drops just below 80, then add the matcha and let it steep for a minute before adding the rest of the chocolate.

Matcha powders vary in strength, and people's tastes for how much matcha flavor they like are different. It's possible that the author used a stronger matcha powder or simply liked less of that flavor in the finished product. If you are getting the most flavor out of your powder and you want more matcha flavor then the answer would seem to be adding a stronger matcha powder or more of what you have to get the right flavor. Sprinkle it on as you stir rather than spooning it on all at once to avoid lumps.