Green Tea/Matcha Shortbread Cookies
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into pieces
- 1 to 2 tablespoons Matcha (powdered green tea), to taste
- 1/2 cup sugar to 3/4 cup sugar if you have a sweet tooth and no sweet filling
- 1 tablespoon coarse sanding sugar, optional
- 4 oz white or milk chocolate for filling or dipping
- 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silpat
- 1. Whisk and sift flour, Matcha, and salt together, set aside.
- 2. Beat butter on medium high speed with paddle attachment in a bowl of electric standing mixer about 3 minutes until creamy. Add sugar gradually and continue beating until light and fluffy. Turn the machine off. Add flour mixture and beat at low speed until the mixture just combine and has uniform green color. Scrap the bowl once or twice. The dough should look crumbly but will form together between two fingers. Gather them into a ball in the bowl.
- 3. Roll out 1/2 of the dough first to 1/8-1/4 in. thickness between two layers of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Cut the dough with you prefered cookies cutter/dip the cutters into the flour before cutting. The large cutter needs thicker dough layer. Transfer the cookies to the prepared pans 1 in. apart. If the dough is getting too soft, put it in the freeze 10-15 minutes. Reroll and continue cutting as many cookies as possible from the remaining dough. Refrigerate for one hour or freeze 15 minutes if preferred. Use a back of a small knife or a small skewer press down to make the leaves' vein. Sprinkle sanding sugar over cookies if desired and light pat down to help sugar adhesion but the sugar still remain on the top of cookies do not press down. If you plan to make sandwich cookies, remember to cut and arrange shape cookies that one faces up & one faces down on the baking pans so when finish baking we can press two cookies'back together. That makes the prettier cookies.
- 4. Preheat oven 350 oF 20 minutes before baking with a rack in the middle oven. Transfer cookies with parchment paper to another pan/room temperature. Bake 15-18 minutes for large cookie and shiny pans, 8-10 minutes for smaller cookies and dark pans. The cookies should dry to the tough and no change of the green color. The longer baking time will increase the green tea flavor and the bitterness. Remove from oven, let cookies rest on the baking pan until warm enough to transfer to cooling rack. Cool completely.
- 5. If desired, cookies can be filled with chocolate. Melt 4 oz white or milk chocolate over simmer water, (not boiling) and not allow water to get in the chocolate. Stir until smooth and let it cool down at room temperature to thicken enough to spread into the cookies and made sandwich cookies. Store in an air tight container for a few days.
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