I know, it’s Wednesday, but this is my entry into the Sugar High Fridays Event #67 !!

I have wanted to enter one of these since 2006, so I’ve had a little festival of fun with my recipe… I don’t know what to call it exactly—but let’s make it:

Matcha-Cherry Madness!

Base:

45g ground almonds
110g AP flour
10g matcha
55g butter, room temperature and cut into pieces
40g white sugar

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter an 8″ square pan and cut a generous length of parchment so that there is overhang at either end (which will help for removing the squares later).
• Whisk together ground almonds, flour, matcha and sugar in a medium sized bowl, until well combined.
• Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender until the mixture is a coarse meal with pea-sized lumps.
• Dump the mixture into the prepared pan, and tamp down with your fingers until evenly spread out. Use the back of a large spoon to press firmly so that the dough is firmly packed and smooth on top.
• Bake, rotating halfway through, for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are golden brown. Careful! If the matcha is uniformly golden, you’ve already overbaked it.
• Remove from the oven and cool completely on a wire rack.

Icing:

1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4-1/2 tsp wasabi, to taste
3-4 cups icing sugar, sifted

• Combine cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl; add wasabi and stir well.
• Add 2 cups of sifted icing sugar to the bowl and mix until smooth. Add the next cup of sugar, or as much as you want until the desired consistency is reached.

Topping:

1 cup pitted sour cherries, in a light syrup
1/2 tbsp cornstarch or potato starch

• Combine sour cherries and starch in a small saucepan over a medium heat.
• Stir regularly, until the mixture thickens—but be careful not to boil.

Assembly:

Spread frosting to the desired thickness over the base (I had some icing left over afterwards). Place the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes, or until icing is firm enough to be cut cleanly. Remove from freezer and lift the bars out of the pan using the parchment overhang. Score the frosting with a knife into the desired size of bars as a guideline for applying the cherries, and top with cherry mixture in the centre of the bars.

The verdict:

These are complex… but I like them! You would want to like wasabi for this to go over well—but I think I actually liked the matcha square with the wasabi cream cheese frosting better without the cherry on top… and I love cherries! I felt like the cherries might have overpowered the whole thing, so I think in the future I’d probably chop the cherries a bit before thickening to make more of a cherry spread for the top. The bottom has a nice crunch, and the sweetness of the matcha almond base and cherries is nicely offset by the undertone of wasabi.

And I’ll definitely make them again! These aren’t for everyone, but definitely my kind of crazy dessert!