Matcha Cupcakes with Azuki Beans

 

I've finally made my Matcha Cupcakes with Azuki Buttercream with my new Kitchenaid mixer! I even used my spanking new mini cupcake silicon tray and I must say that they're adorable. :)

A few things that I learnt from today's experiment:

1. Do not use wholemeal flour for cupcakes, it will leave a texture that has too much bite (so much for trying to make 'healthier' cupcakes
2. Do not be lazy and just fold in the azuki beans into the matcha cupcake batter instead of using the 'Stir' function of the Kitchenaid. It was too efficient at smashing up the soft beans and my batter cooked to become less green and more brown :(

That said, it didn't really smash up my beans too badly in the buttercream, which was good because I still wanted the buttercream to show the beans. Makes them look a lot more interesting, don't you think? To make my life easy, I bought a can of azuki beans that were already cooked in sugar so you'll know that they're sweetened and soft.

Anyway, here's the recipe without all my variations:

Ingredients 
Cupcakes 

• 1 cup granulated sugar 
• 1 3/4 cups plain flour 
• 2 teaspoons baking soda 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 2 tablespoons matcha powder 
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature 
• 2 large eggs, room temperature 
• 1 cup double cream 
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil) 

Frosting 

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature 
• 3/4 cup smashed red beans (azuki) 
• 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Cupcake Method

1. Preheat the oven to 175 deg C 
2. Mix the dry ingredients in your mixing bowl before adding in the butter and oil and mixing it all together on low speed
3. Once the mixture is a little sticky, add in the eggs and double cream. Continue to combine everything on medium speed
4. Fill your cupcake moulds with the batter till they're half full and bake for about 15 minutes for regular sized cupcakes and 8 minutes for mini cupcakes. Do check with the toothpick test nonetheless
5. Cool the cupcakes completely before frosting

Frosting Method

1. Mix butter on high speed until light and fluffy
2. Mix in the azuki beans to your desired smoothness of the beans
3. Add in the salt and then slowly add in the powdered sugar until fully combined
4. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes

The mini ones are really 'dangerous' because you can pop one into your mouth easily. You can easy pop a few at one time and mind you, the amount of batter I placed into these mini cupcakes was exactly half of the regular sized cupcakes. Uh huh...deceiving little things they are.

When I was imagining these cupcakes, I wanted to decorate the frosting with a dusting of matcha powder but I decided not to do so when I piped on the frosting. I think the azuki beans were nice enough.