Green tea cheesecake

We had David's boss and his family (wife and 3 kids) over for dinner on Sunday afternoon. David did most of the cooking, apart from the dessert, which is usually seen as my department. We cooked a Japanese inspired dinner and decided to try to make a green tea cheesecake for dessert.

We've previously made green tea ice cream, which was surprisingly good so we thought this was the next logical step. I used a basic baked cheesecake recipe from Sue Lawrence's Book of Baking and then added green tea powder instead of the lemon juice and rind. It worked, and was tasty, although I still think I prefer the original lemon one.

Keeping on the Japanese theme we found the little Japanese shop I blogged about visiting the other week and then didn't think I'd be able to find it again. It's called Common Japanese Standards and has a website. It's well worth visiting if you're in the neighbourhood. The couple that run it are ever so friendly and they have some beautiful things for sale. They also give you some green tea to drink while you look at everything and have a chat.

Here's the start of my latest project. It's going to be a zipped jacket (it has a little way to go yet!) but will hopefully look something like this once it's done.

The skiing lesson last weekend went well - the instructor was very funny and made it a lot of fun. He gave us a lot of tips and hopefully started us off with some good techniques. We just need to get out there and get some practice in now. The snow's still a bit patchy (although it has just been snowing) so getting practice around here might not be so easy.