As I hadn't decided on what ice-cream flavours I would be making (it all hinged on what I would be serving for the main course), I started off by making a plain sponge and filled it with a custard cream. Once I'd settled on serving temaki zushi (hand-rolled sushi) for lunch, my mind was soon made up to fill the cake with matcha (green tea) and ginger ice-creams, with warabi mochi between the layers:
As there would only be four of us eating this dessert, I made a smaller version using a 1 litre bowl. The slices of Swiss roll look a big large really, perhaps I should have made min-rolls... I also thought I'd put too much matcha ice-cream in, leaving little room for the final layer of ginger ice-cream, but it turns out that the ginger had quite a kick to it and would have been overpowering had I added any more!
Using warabi mochi for the middle layer was a total gamble, I had no idea how it would handle being frozen (I'm afraid I cheated here and used shop-bought warabi-mochi - it is in fact very easy to make, but I didn't know that at the time ;-) - me bad!) Much to my relief, it didn't end up at all hard, just slightly chewy (kind of like a dense marshmallow).
This was definitely a grownup dessert, and although the kids got very excited about it as I brought it to the table, they were more than satisfied with their home-made rocky-road ice-cream :-). Except M, who would much rather eat what the oldies are eating (you should have seen her eating salmon roe by the spoonful) - at the age of (nearly) 3 she has a more adventurous palate than K!
So there you have it - Mark's Matcha Birthday Bombe! And there isn't any left...
Matcha Ice-Cream100ml cream
3 egg yolks
60g caster sugar
100ml milk
1 tablespoon matcha (powdered green tea)
Mix the matcha with the milk. Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until pale and light, then pour into a pan along with the matcha milk. Cook over a low heat, stirring all the time, until the mixture thickens, then allow to cool. Whisk the cream until it is thick, then stir in the cooled matcha custard. Chill in the fridge for an hour or so before churning into ice-cream.
Ginger Ice-Cream
100ml cream
2 egg yolks
60g caster sugar
100ml milk
10g ground ginger
Make as above, mixing the ginger into the milk before preparing the custard.
