This vegan matcha pound cake is moist and fluffy with the aroma of matcha. It's just mixing and baking, a super easy cake that anyone can make without failure.

Vegan matcha pound cake or green tea cake is a beautiful cake that comforts you with the flavor of matcha. No butter or no eggs is required, but it has a moist and fluffy finish.
Instead of butter, we use sesame oil, and instead of egg, we use baking powder. We use maple syrup for sweetness.
- This recipe is for you if:
- You love matcha desserts
- You are looking for a easy vegan matcha cake recipe
- You want to make an vegan pound cake recipe
This vegan matcha cake is a nice treat for vegans and those who are not good at the richness of butter and white sugar's intense sweetness.
If you want to check the recipe right now, go ahead and jump to the recipe from the link below. Lets' get started!
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About this recipe
- Vegan cake using matcha powder
- Require only six ingredients
- Baking time:50 minutes
- An easy and simple recipe
- More matcha dessert recipes
Easy Pound Cake Recipe
General ingredients for pound cake are butter, white sugar, eggs, and flour. It is called pound cake because each ingredient use one pound (about 450g).
And how to make it requires a lot of steps. Have butter at room temperature, beat it, add eggs one at a time, and add sugar and flour gradually.
This vegan matcha pound cake is not technically a pound cake, but the taste is similar and easy to make.
You will mix the liquid, sift the flour, mix and bake. That's it.
With these easy steps, you can make a delicious vegan cake. No need to worry about failure!
📋Ingredients
Here are the ingredients (amounts are in the recipe card below).
- Soy Milk: Please pick soy milk made from non-GMO soybeans and the one with no flavor or no sugar added. Soy milk is reasonable and easy to get in Japan, so I use it for cooking and baking, but If you don't consume soy milk, you can substitute it with your favorite milk, such as almond milk or oats milk.
- Oil: I use taihaku sesame oil for baking sweets. This particular sesame oil is squeezed raw, so it does not have the color and aroma compared to standard sesame oil (squeeze after roasting). It makes the dough fluffy and does not become greasy over time. You can substitute it with oil that doesn't have a strong flavor if you can't find it.
- Maple Syrup: Any maple syrup is ok. I prefer to purchase a large bottle (1L size), then make cakes many times! You can substitute it with honey.
- Flour: You can use all-purpose flour or Cake flour.
- Baking Powder: I recommend aluminum-free baking powder. It is said that aluminum can cause harm to children's health, so you should avoid it as much as possible.
- Matcha Powder: Please see below.
Matcha Powder (Green tea powder)
You might be able to find matcha powder for tea ceremony training or desserts, and both are OK.
You only use a tiny amount per each, so a small package is good enough for making desserts.
There is also matcha powder with chlorella. It gives a solid green color, so matcha with chlorella would be perfect if you want a beautiful finished color.
🥣 Baking Equipment
Having valuable equipment is very important. Please read through for a brief explanation of each item.
- Spatula: A spatula is an essential tool for mixing ingredients. This particular spatula has a firm tip, so it's easy to scrape the dough from the bowl.
- Whisk: It's easy to use a whisk to blend liquid ingredients.
- Strainer: A strainer with a handle is easy to sift dry ingredients.
- Cake Pan: I use a rectangle cake pan (18cm/7inch). This loaf pan would be perfect for this cake, but you can use a round or square pan.
- Mixing Bowl: Deep and large-sized mixing bowl is good so that the flour does not scatter when mixing.
- Parchment paper: Parchment paper is placed in a cake pan.
That's it. I hope you have similar equipment at home then you can start cooking right now!
🔪Instructions
I will walk you through how to make it step by step. You can also watch this video.
Firstly, preheat the oven to 180C/356F.
- Mix wet ingredients: Put soy milk, oil, and maple syrup in a bowl and mix with a whisk until well blended.
- Add dry ingredients: Place a strainer on the bowl, and add flour, baking powder, and matcha powder.
- Shift dry ingredients
- Mix all the ingredients: Mix them with a spatula. If you mix too much, the cake will be firm and won't be fluffy, so be careful not to mix too much.
- Pour the batter into a cake pan: Place parchment paper into a cake pan and pour the cake batter. Hold both ends of the cake pan and release air.
- Score the surface: Score the surface with a knife or skewer.
- Bake: Place in a 180C/356F oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.
- Check if it's baked: Put a skewer in the middle, and if the batter does not stick, a delicious vegan matcha cake is ready!
Isn't it so easy? ! Once you get used to it, you can set it in the oven in less than 10 minutes.
After baking, remove the whole parchment paper and put it on a wire rack to cool it down. It is difficult to cut when it is hot, so please wait for some time.
Storage
Store at room temperature for about five days.
It's safe to keep them in the fridge during the hot season, but they will dry out quickly if you do so. If this happens, warming them up again in a microwave for 20 seconds should make their texture fluffy and soft!
You can also store them in the freezer by wrapping each piece with plastic wrap. They'll last one month that way. Thaw at room temperature or microwave them before eating.
Vegan Matcha Pound Cake with Azuki
The picture above is with azuki (Red Bean Paste).
Matcha and azuki match very well. You can add 1 or 2 tablespoon of azuki according to your taste. The cake won't be too sweet with that portion.
Also, the color is darker as I added an extra teaspoon of matcha powder. If you want to fully enjoy the flavor of matcha, adding an extra teaspoon of matcha powder to this recipe will make such a bright green.
Do you like to tweak to your taste? Then go ahead and make your original matcha pound cake!
Variations
Let's change up some ingredients and bake the varieties of cake. Here are some ideas.
- Basic pound cake: If you omit matcha powder, it will be a plain cake.
- Cacao pound cake: Change matcha powder into cacao powder and mix some chocolate chips.
- Banana almond pound cake: Mash one banana and mix in, then top with sliced almond.
- Blueberry pound cake: Mix in blueberries.
You can add your favorite dried fruits and nuts and enjoy the variety!
Rice flour (Gluten-Free)
If you are looking for a gluten-free option, you can substitute AP flour or cake flour with rice flour.
Replace the amount of cake flour with the rice flour and add 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
Adding extra baking powder will make the cake rise higher.
Thanks For Stopping By
This moist matcha pound cake is super straightforward. If you love matcha, you will love it for sure!
I hope this recipe is helpful.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog♡ If you’ve tried this recipe(or any other recipe on the blog), please give it a star rating below!
Also, feel free to leave comments if you have any questions. I love hearing from you!
Chef JA Cooks is a Japanese food blog that shares simple and healthy Japanese home cooking recipes, including vegan and vegetarian. From traditional Japanese recipes to modern recipes with step-by-step instructions.
More Matcha Dessert Recipes You Might Like
📖 Recipe
Vegan Matcha Pound Cake
Print Pin SAVEIngredients
Wet Ingredients
- 3½ tablespoon Tbsp Oil, 50g/53ml
- 4 tablespoon Maple Syrup, 70g/60ml
- ⅔ c Soy Milk, 140g/165ml
Dry Ingredients
- 1⅔ c All-purpose flour or Cake flour, 200g/380ml
- 2 teaspoon Baking Powder, 8g/10ml
- 2 teaspoon Matcha Powder , 5g/10ml
Instructions
- Preheat oven: Preheat oven at 180C/356F.
- Put wet ingredients: Put A ingredients into a bowl and mix.
- Add dry ingredients: Place a strainer on the bowl, add B ingredients, sift them, and mix.
- Pour the batter: Place parchment paper in a cake pan and pour the cake batter into it.
- Bake: Score the surface with a knife and bake for 35-40minutes at 180C/356F.
Video
Notes
- Equipment: Loaf pan (18cm/7 inch), spatula, whisk, strainer, mixing bowl, parchment paper.
- Storage: It will last for five days at room temperature and one month in the freezer.
- Substitute: You can substitute soy milk with your favorite milk, such as oat milk and almond milk. You can use oil that doesn't have a strong smell.
- If you mix too much in step 3, the cake will be firm and won't be fluffy, so be careful not to mix too much.
- Maple Syrup, Soy Milk, Baking Powder, Matcha Powder
- *US/M conversion doesn't work right for some ingredients, so please refer to the amount inside () for a more accurate amount.
jaime
OMG baking powder 6 table spoons ! loaf is just growing out of the oven....
This is crazy....
Chef JA
Thanks for making, Jaime! I just realized that the recipe is wrong:( Baking powder is 2 tsp not 2 TBSP.That's crazy amount! Sorry about your cake but hope you will try again!
Adriana
Hi ! Matcha powder is 2 tsps or 2 TBPs ?? I’m gonna try on friday
Chef JA
Hi Adriana, it's 2 teaspoons! I hope you will love it!
Nayeon
I just tried this recipe and the pound cake came out so yummy! I didn't have oil so I used butter, and I made matcha glaze to drizzle on top. It's amazingly soft and scrumptious. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
Chef JA
Hi Nayeon!, Matcha glaze sounds pretty good! Thanks for trying my recipe:)
Mark
Matcha glaze does sound amazing, whats your recipe?
JURI
Hi Mark, Hi Mark, I don' have the glaze recipe (I should make it though!) but you can try this recipe below.
https://cookinglsl.com/matcha-baked-donuts-with-matcha-glaze/
Hannah
hii i'd like to try your recipe.. but i dont have a raw sesame oil in my country.. can virgin coconut oil can replace it? and can i use almond milk instead of soy? Thank you so much!
Chef JA
Hi Hannah, Thanks for visiting my site! Yes, you can use both coconut oil and almond milk. Please give me a feedback if you make it!
Jenny
This looks delicious! Would hemp milk work instead of soy milk?
JURI
Hi Jenny, I haven't tried hemp milk but it would work. I hope you like the recipe!
Eleanor
Is the oil in mls?
Chef JA
Hi Eleanor, oil is 56ml in this recipe. By the way, maple syrup is 56ml and soy milk is 147ml. I will add these in the recipe. Thanks for your question!
Justine Kau
Hi, for cake flour, is it 200gm or 360gm. Coz it's written 360ml.
JURI
Oh, sorry>< it's confusing. Cake flour is 200g. I meant to write both all-purpose flour and cake flour are 200g in weight and 360ml in volume. I'm gonna modify that part. Thanks for letting me know, Justine!
Jen
I just tried this today and wow!! Absolutely loved it an totally recommend. I didnt follow the recipe completely but it came out so cakey and nice. I would recommend putting in some vegan white chocolate!
Chef JA
That white chocolate sounds so yummy! Thank you so much for trying my recipe!
Derek
I like how simple it is . Many vegan recipe call for lots of ingredients.
Chef JA
Thank you so much for your comment! I like a simple recipe. Glad you like it too!
Renata
It looks so yummy, I want so much to make this cake, but here in my country, syrup is very expensive, and honey it's not really cheap, do you think I can substitute for sugar?
Can't wait to try! 😀
Thanks for the recipe!!
JURI
Hi Renata, thank you for your comment! You can substitute it with sugar! You can add 40g-100g of sugar to your taste. I like moderate sweetness so I usually add 40-50g of sugar for 200g of flour. Just for your reference. And it's better to add milk and oil as syrup is a liquid ingredient, so why don't you add 10g of oil and 20g of milk? I hope it works!
Sasha
I converted all the measurements into tablespoons and cups, baked for 38 minutes. It came out perfectly! Very soft and fluffy!
JURI
I'm so happy to hear that! Thanks for making it, Sasha!
Miranda
Can you put in the conversions? I tried to make this by converting and it came out sooo bad
JURI
Hi Miranda, I added a measurement spoon and cup to the recipe card. Let me know if conversions work for you!
J Inouye
Perfect amount of sweetness! I love that the recipe is so easy to make, uses ingredients I always have on hand, and makes a small batch that is the perfect amount! I will definitely be making this again!
JURI
Thank you for your comment!! I'm so glad you like the recipe!
Mady
Hi, will this work with almond flour and flaxmeal? Trying to do low-carb as much as possible. Also want to use less sweetener and less oil.
JURI
I haven't tried it with almond flour so I'm not sure. It might work...let me try then I will let you know the result!
Mark
I have spent weeks trying to find a delicious yet simple matcha cake recipe. Now I found it. Made it today and it rocked my world - Fantastic! Now I am looking into more of your recipes and looking forward to making & eating more of them.
JURI
Hi Mark, thanks for trying my matcha cake recipe! I'm so happy to hear you enjoy it!! I hope you like other recipes as well.