Green tea roll with red bean filling

This sponge roll cake with matcha and red bean filling was the first recipe that I got from my Japanese friend Ayako. She is a pastry chef and invented the recipe herself, so that it was the perfect birthday cake for one of my other Japanese friends :-)
Whilst looking where to buy the Japanese red bean paste, I even found a recipe how to prepare it yourself, but ultimately I managed to find the right paste readymade in an Asias shop very close by. I used a little more than the 150 g red bean paste that the recipe suggested, see below.

Ingredients for 16 servings:
5 eggs size M (or 6 eggs size S)

125 g sugar

125 g flour

10 g matcha - green tea powder
2 tablespoons sugar

250 g red bean paste

200 g whipping cream

Energy: 170 kcal/ serving

Preparation:

Add eggs and sugar in a large bowl,  weigh out flour and matcha powder and mix well.

Beat eggs and sugar to stable foam, sieve in flour mixture and fold in carefully.

Pour the sponge cake batter on a tray lined with baking paper and spread it out smoothly, bake at 200 ° C for 8-10 min.

The classic procedure for sponge cake rolls is to turn out the baked sponge cake onto a dish towel sprinkled with sugar - I've done it the other way around, I spinkled 2 tablespoons sugar onto the sponge cake, covered it with the dish towel and used a large cutting board to flip over the whole thing. Then I used the dish towel to roll up the cake, starting  from the narrow side, and set it to cool like that.

For the filling, beat the red bean paste smooth in a bowl, beat the cream until stiff and fold it into the red bean paste. Gently unroll the sponge cake roll, spread it with the filling and roll it up again. 

Cut the roll straight on both ends and decorate as desired with whipped cream ... and then we say "Itada kimasu" (Bon Appetit!)

I prepared the first of these green tea rolls a few years ago... and those who can read katakana now also know the names of the recipients ;-)