Green Tea Cookies

I have never been much of a baker.  I like to cook extravagant meals and experiment with savory recipes.  Put a baking task in front of me and I am lost.  Therefore, I usually only bust out the baking with a batch of Christmas cookies or Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pies.  This year I decided to manipulate an already unique recipe for Earl Grey Tea Cookies with some Asian flair.  Green Tea (Matcha) Cookies! I used Green Tea leaves that mom and dad had picked up while they were visiting Japan in the Spring.

I would have preferred to use some tea leaves and some Matcha powder but I only had the leaves, so I ground up the tea leaves using a Japanese mortar and pestle (Suribachi).  

I again diverted from the recipe. It calls for 1 teaspoon of water but to get as much green tea flavour as possible, I figured it would be helpful to add 1 tablespoon of highly concentrated Green Tea (minus the leaves).  On reflection, I probably would have added even more straight Tea for enhanced flavour and adjusted the flour ratio accordingly.

Cream the butter with all of the ingredients.

Roll dough into a long tube and store in the freezer for 30 minutes to half an hour.  This will harden the dough enough so that cutting it will be easier.  Cut into 1/4 inch slices.

Bake at about 350 - 375 for 10-14 minutes.  

I got the original recipe from a blog entitled Kitchen Therapy.  It was for Earl Grey Tea Cookies (which are also very delicious).  I altered the recipe to look more like this:

Green Tea Cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup icing sugar
2 - 4 tablespoons of Green Tea Leaves or Matcha Powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 - 4 tablespoons highly concentrated Green Tea
1 cup unsalted butter

Happy Holidays Everyone!

xx

J