If you like green tea (in particular green tea desserts) at least half as much as I do then you need to visit South Korea at some point in your life. Myself and French expat Marie Anne went on a mission to find the best green tea castella cake in Seoul and were not disappointed. Situated in the Lotte Department store in Myeongdong, Bansuk Castella boast ‘foamy’ castella. I’ve never seen this type of castella cake anywhere else. Castella is famous for being very difficult to make as the cake must come out perfectly level and flat. Bansuk Castella however looks deflated as though it’s been taken out of the oven too soon. Well that’s because it has. When you rip open the centre of these cakes you’re met with oozing castella, think chocolate lava cake. Castella is a very light cake so to have the melted centre is a wonderful surprise without being heavy and sickly sweet like the western lava cake.

Bansuk Castella serves up four different flavours of their famous castella cake: Green tea, dark chocolate, cream cheese and of course plain. In this video we tried the green tea and plain flavours and my goodness they were amazing. The plain has quite an ‘eggy’ taste which may not be for everyone but I like cakes where you can taste real ingredients in them. I have a feeling that the cream cheese would be amazing as well, Korea seems to be producing a lot of cream cheese based desserts these days and the one’s I’ve tasted have not been a disappointment. So if you end up in Myeongdong (as most people do when visiting Seoul) be sure to make time for Bansuk Castella. The department store shuts quite early for a Korean store, around 8/9pm so be sure to get there before closing time!