Tea Sweets Tea Cookies good idea-in theory

March 8th, 2008 Laura

Since I had some powdered matcha (Japanese green tea) at home, I decided to try making these babies, though the original poster of the recipe had decided that they were better with ground powdered oolong tea as one of the ingredients (I’m going to have to try that as a variant because I believe it will taste better). I took the recipe’s advice and saved the egg whites that were not used in the recipe, they ended up as an emergency substitution in another recipe when I ran out of eggs. The cookies themselves came out to be a lovely shade of green (in a whimsical mood, thinking of St. Patrick’s Day’s impending arrival, I had used a four-leaf clover cookie cutter and rolled ‘em in green colored sugar, so they are not the little hearts in the picture of ‘em Gothamist shows).

Tea Cookies w/real tea (”Amai’s tea sweets”)

Tea Cookies
(adapted with very minor variations from Lovescool/Amai Tea & Bake House)
3/4 C (2.25 oz) confectioners sugar
5 oz unsalted butter (5/8 C, or 1 and 1/4 stick), straight from the fridge, cut into 1 tbsp slices
1 3/4 C (8.5 oz) all-purpose flour
3 large egg yolks (save the whites to make tuiles or macarons)
1 1/2 tbsp ground tea of your choosing
1 C granulated sugar (for coating)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, mix the sugar and ground tea together. Add the butter and continue mixing until smooth and pale.

Add the flour and mix until well combined.

Add the egg yolks and mix just until the eggs are fully incorporated and a mass forms.

Form the dough into a disk and chill in the refrigerator until firm - the original recipe calls for at least 30 minutes, but with our fridge we prefer to let dough chill for at least a couple of hours before rolling it out.

Which is what you’re doing next, of course - rolling it out. To about 1/2″ thick, which will feel surprisingly thick to those of us more used to rolling out pie crusts.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Cut the dough with small cookie cutters of whatever shape you like. Ours were about 1″ diameter.

Toss each cut cookie in a bowl of granulated sugar to coat.

Place the sugar-coated cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheets, about 1″ apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating from top to bottom and back to front halfway through the baking time. When they are done, they will be slightly golden around the edges.

There was only one problem: I didn’t really like how they tasted! I’m planning to fob ‘em off on my womens’ club meeting….

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