Years ago my parents hosted a Japanese exchange student who lived on matcha tea. Well, at first she didn’t. When she first got to U.S. she enjoyed the entire array of the Standard American Diet, nicknamed SAD basically because it is … sad.
But, when she was Skyping with her dad and he saw how much weight she gained, he immediately sent her a “care” package filled with matcha tea and a bunch of other native goodies to help her get back to her normal weight. I should’ve realized then that it was good for losing weight but hey, I wasn’t paying much attention because I didn’t have much weight to lose then.
Now, I’m paying attention. I tried this for the first time last week and it’s actually delicious. When you first smell the tea dissolved in water, it smells pretty “green.” Mix it with some sweetener, coconut milk and blend it nice and frothy and it becomes something different altogether! It’s divine.
I used whole coconut milk, not low fat. This is important if you want the frothiness. And, not coconut cream. That’s way too much fat and it’s just too thick. If all you have is coconut cream though, you can still make it. Just mix half a can of the cream with as much milk or a dairy-free alternative. I used hemp milk because I made this a couple times. The cream in both cases will melt as you heat it and become liquid.
I used my blender to whip this up, but you can use a stick blender or even a whisk and good ol’ elbow grease.
- 1 can full-fat coconut milk
- 2 tsp. matcha powder
- Sweetener of choice (I used 4 Tbls. Lakanto sweetener)
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- Dissolve matcha in 2 Tbls. very hot water.
- On the stovetop, heat coconut milk to just below boiling.
- Pour into blender, add matcha and remaining ingredients.
- Blend until frothy.
- Makes two generous servings.