A Low Key Birthday Weekend.

Happy Birthday Weekend to me!

My Sephora birthday gift arrived in the post this week.

It's going to be a quiet one because my favourite little preschooler is still under the weather.

He's been home since Tuesday without showing any signs of cabin fever.  Very unusual for him but the colour is returning to his face and there's definitely more giggles and grins than there were earlier on in the week.

First on my list of low key birthday celebrations will be a quiet appreciation of all the things that got fixed while Preschooler SSG and I have been stuck at home this week - the plumbing, the landline and that stray tree trunk branch.  This will all happen while I hold that first mug of tea early on Saturday morning as I pad around the house in my running gear and ugg boots.  I like to keep it glamorous in my down time.

And then I'll be heading for a super hot shower with my new shower cream from L'Occitane.  This is the first full sizedstandan alone L'Occitane body wash I've ever purchased (I usually only get them as hotel freebies or parts of gift sets) and I'm irrationally excited to see how this goes.  The Arlesienne scent is a combination of roses, violet and saffron which sounds really strange but is actually very pretty.  It reminds me of that light, modern take on rose fragrance that Lancome's Tresor first released way back when.

Breakfast is going to be a large wedge of this green tea cake with white chocolate buttercream frosting.  Thank you, Preschooler SSG for doing such a great job with the sprinkles.

I love the scent of matcha powder.  It's also often so beautifully and precisely packaged as practically everything from Japan is.

Then there's its lively, vivid, vital greenness.

And that scent again as it adds a touch of the exotic to something as seemingly mundane as cake batter.

It's just as well I have this vanilla pod in my caster sugar cannister.  I completely forgot to add vanilla extract to the batter.

The star ingredient of this cake's frosting is a bar of white chocolate.

I really enjoyed the combination of flavours in The Spruce's version of green tea cake.  The cake isn't sweet and has a nice sem fine texture to it.  Frosting wise, the white chocolate buttercream was the perfect foil for this cake's flavours.  I was suprised at how simple this cake was to bake and assemble.  The Spruce website has a number of other recipes featuring matcha and I'm now curious to give them a go.

Have you ever baked with matcha?

Do life twists and turns sometimes see you plan a very, very low key birthday weekend?  Fear not, I've got plans that will make up for this over the coming weeks.

Be well.