Recipe: Matcha Hottie Latte

Between Starbucks' green tea lattes and Jamba Juice's matcha smoothies, I developed a full-blown matcha addiction about two years ago. For once, it's a culinary Siren song that I don't have to resist. Matcha has a long list of health benefits, including the ability to detoxify blood, instill a relaxed state of alertness, boost metabolic rates, and flood your system with twice as many antioxidants as red wine. So I bought a little tin of it from Stash Tea a while back, looking forward to all the matcha magic that I would make in my kitchen. My ardent enthusiasm was met with defeat. Following a couple of recipes for lattes I found online, I achieved vaguely green soy milk with a ton of bitter powder clinging to the bottom of the mug...and a big honkin' hive on my upper lip. Lesson One: in high doses, I'm allergic.

This weekend I dug a little deeper and found an enlightening web site that describes all the different methods people use at home to coax the beloved froth out of their matcha powder, with most recipes calling for a 1/2 teaspoon of the green stuff. After researching Japanese whisks and Bodum's cute (although somewhat sex-toy-like) electric frothers online, I decided what the hell? Let's just try a martini shaker first. SUCCESS! Beautiful froth, deep green suspension of the tea in the milk, and no hives anywhere on my person. It totally works. Here's how:

1. Using a Cobbler martini shaker, pour in 6 oz. of cold soy milk
2. Add 1/2 teaspoon of high grade matcha powder
3. Toss in a bit of sweetener if you like - I use stevia leaf powder, another super-concentrated antioxidant source
4. Cap and shake it, shake shake shake it, shake like a Polaroid picture...for about 30 seconds
5. Pour this green loveliness into a deep cup or mug, making sure to tip out all of the froth from the bottom of the shaker
6. Nuke it in the microwave for one minute. The green froth will expand as it heats - once again reminding you that physics can be our friend.

When is physics not our friend? When we put hot soy milk into a metal martini shaker, that's when. Unless you miss the nice folks at the ER and/or cleaning explosive gunk off your kitchen ceiling, don't try this experiment at home.