makes about 36 mini-cookies (1″ diameter) | Original Post tworedbowls.com
Ingredients
light green swirl:
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 tbsp confectioners’ sugar
- 1/2 egg yolk (optional)
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp matcha powder
- 1 pinch of baking powder
- 1 small pinch of salt
dark green swirl:
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 tbsp confectioners’ sugar
- 1/2 egg yolk (optional)
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp matcha powder
- 1 pinch of baking powder
- 1 small pinch of salt
Instructions
1. Prepare the light green dough first. In a medium bowl, whisk together the butter and powdered sugar vigorously until smooth. Add half the egg yolk and the almond extract, and whisk again until smooth.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, 1/2 tsp matcha powder, baking powder and salt. (A note on judging the color — the mixture will be a little lighter green than the dough will actually turn out.) Gradually add flour mixture to butter in batches, beating after each addition, until ingredients are fully incorporated and it has formed a thick, rough dough. Form the dough into a ball and place in the refrigerator.
3. Next, prepare the dark green dough. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for the dark green dough, but with 1 full teaspoon of matcha powder. You may want to play around with the amount of matcha you add — you can up the dark green dough to 1.5 tsp, for instance, or decrease the light green dough to 1/4 tsp, for greater contrast and a stronger green tea flavor.
Oh hello, little round Martian friends.
4. Here, you can either chill the dough balls or just roll them out immediately. I found that it was fine to roll them out right away the second time I made them. I placed the dough between two layers of saran wrap in order to minimize the dough sticking to the rolling pin — alternatively, you can also place them into Ziploc bags, which was amazing for getting the size of the layers exactly the same. If you want to make mini-sized cookies, like I did, roll the dough out to about 1/8″ thickness, into squares that are about 5″x5″ (or the size of one sandwich Ziploc). There should be about four in total, two of each color. If you want to reuse the Ziplocs, chill the dough at this point until hard and then peel off the Ziplocs before layering and rolling into logs; if you don’t care, just slit the sides and peel off. Place one lighter-colored square on top of one dark-colored square, lining them up as best you can, and gently roll lengthways into a log. It should form a roll about an inch in diameter, and you should get two logs out of the dough. For regular-sized cookies, roll the dough out thicker (I’d guess about 1/6″ or thereabouts), instead, so that each ball yields one 7″x7″ square, instead of two smaller ones. Roll those up together and that should result in a log that is thicker, with larger cookies. Either way, once rolled, replace in fridge and let chill for another hour to harden again. At this point, you can also freeze it if you’d like to bake it later.
Saran wrap method. Less precise, but easier to get the plastic off.
5. When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove logs from the fridge (or let defrost, if frozen, for about 10-15 minutes) and slice into 1/4-inch thick rounds. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You only need to leave about half an inch to an inch of space between them, since they will not spread. Bake until you can see the barest hints of brown forming on the bottom edges — about 10 minutes for mini cookies, and about 12 minutes for regular.
You are getting sleeeeepy… You are getting very, very sleepy… When I snap my fingers, you will wake up and bake matcha cookies.
