Matcha Coconut Mille Crepe Cake

I’m going to be honest: I find the cooking of stove-top foods like waffles, pancakes or crepes to be incredibly monotonous, which is why my crepes are never quite as thin as they should be. The bowl full of batter sitting just to the right of the stove starts to look something like a pile of receipts waiting to be sorted for tax purposes. I just want to get through it as quickly as possible. So I don’t know why I got it into my head to make a mille crepe cake (literally, a thousand crepes — literal, as in that’s what the name means, although the cake doesn’t require a literal thousand). When B and I went to Japan late last year, we ate slices of mille crepe every single time we came across them, which was quite often and usually in cafes in train stations. So much of that short trip was about taking trains.

I came across a can of coconut cream in the High Street Market a couple of months back and had been trying to come up with a way to combine it with matcha, or 가루녹차 (green tea powder) for weeks. Contrary to what some sources on the internet told me, the brand of coconut cream I had did not whip up nicely even after I’d left it in the fridge overnight, so I combined it with heavy cream, and whipped the rest of the heavy cream in with the green tea powder and some powdered sugar to make two kinds of cream to layer between the crepes.

The result was intense and earthy, almost dirty, in the best possible way. If I had it to do over, I would have been patient enough to make the crepes thinner and possibly not dusted the top with green tea powder, no matter how nice it looked, because it was gritty enough to take away from the creaminess of the cake, which is the point of the whole thing, really. Looks aren’t everything. Who’da thunk it?

Matcha Coconut Mille Crepe Cake

Crepes

• 3/4 cup white flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 5 eggs
• 3 egg yolk
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, melted
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons Kahlua (optional, but if left out, add additional 2 tablespoons milk)

1. Combine dry ingredients and mix well.
2. Melt butter and allow to cool, mix with milk and add to dry ingredients. Mix just until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, combine eggs with additional egg yolks and mix well. Add to batter and mix just until combined.
4. Add Kahlua and mix just until combined.
5. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for an hour.
6. Heat skillet over medium heat and grease well with butter (enough to coat the pan, but no more — you don’t want butter-fried crepes).
7. Pour batter into pan 1/3 of a cup at a time and quickly swirl the pan in circles to move the batter outward into a thin layer. If the batter solidifies before you can swirl it out into a large enough circle, your heat is too high — turn it down.
8. Heat crepe until it easily releases from the pan — about 2 minutes. Flip and heat on the other side for about a minute.
9. Re-grease the pan every three or four crepes, or whenever they begin sticking, with a very small amount of butter.
10. After crepes have cooled, wrap in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes.

Matcha Filling

• 1 cup heavy cream, chilled
• 4 tablespoons matcha or 가루녹차 (green tea powder)
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar (or more, if you want sweeter cream)

1. Mix cream with electric mixer on high until stiff peaks form (you should be able to hold the bowl upside down without cream sliding out — if you’re having trouble getting the peaks to form, fill a large bowl with ice water and place your mixing bowl inside the bowl filled with ice water — cream mixes best when it is as cold as possible).
2. Add matcha and powdered sugar and mix until color is consistent.
3. Cover and place in fridge to chill.

Coconut Filling

• 3/4 cup coconut cream, chilled
• 3/4 cup heavy cream chilled
• 4 tablespoons powdered sugar (or more, to taste)

1. Combine creams and mix with electric mixer until stiff peaks form. If peaks won’t form, and the ice water trick above isn’t working, you may need to add more heavy cream.
2. Mix in powdered sugar.
3. Cover and place in fridge to chill.

Building the Cake

1. Place a springform pan ring (can be found at Bangsan Market in Seoul and occasionally at big marts or stores like Daiso) on a large plate. Although spreading the cream inside the ring is a bit awkward, it will help hold your cake together while you build it so you don’t end up with a complete mess.
2. Place one crepe inside the ring and top with a very thin layer (about 1/4 cup) of coconut cream.
3. Top with another crepe and a layer of matcha cream.
4. Continue alternating layers until your ring is full or your are out of crepes.
5. Cover and place in fridge to chill overnight.
6. Release and remove the springform ring. Top with sifted green tea powder if looks are what is important to you in life. If not, top with another layer of green tea cream. Slice, serve and enjoy.