On Tuesday, I started thinking about what green baked goods I could make for St. Patrick's Day. Two years ago for St. Patrick's Day I tried a King Arthur Flour recipe for St. Pat's Pistachio Cookies. The recipe ingredients included a box of pistachio instant pudding mix, and I wasn't all that thrilled with the color or flavor of the resulting cookies.I wanted to find a recipe that would make naturally green baked goods without the need for food coloring, so I Googled the term "green tea desserts." One of the top search results was this May 2007 blog entry with the recipe for Green Tea Sweets from now-defunct New York City tea and bake shop Amai. It looked quite promising, so I gave it a try.
The dough is just a mixture of butter, powdered sugar, matcha green tea powder, flour, and egg yolks. I don't make roll and cut cookies very often (I could be wrong, but I believe that the number of roll and cut cookie recipes I've made in the almost two years I've been maintaining this blog is precisely zero), because I often get frustrated with the time and hassle involved. But this dough was very easy to handle after chilling. It was about the consistency of Play Doh, and I was able to roll it out on a silicone mat without any trouble or the need for any additional flour to prevent sticking. I rolled the dough out to a half-inch thickness as specified in the recipe, and the resulting cut cookies were nice and firm so that I could pick them up with my bare fingers, toss them in granulated sugar, and move them to a baking pan without any drooping or deformation. They kept their shape in the oven and baked up beautifully.
On a whim, I had decided to use a small gingerbread man cookie cutter, and I couldn't help thinking that "Martian Cookies" would be a good name for these adorable little green men (my cookie cutter was only 2.25 inches high from head to toe). The finished cookies had a firm, but not crisp texture, and were lightly sweet with just the slightest hint of green tea flavor. Without the green color, I don't think most people would be able to correctly identify that they contained green tea. I made a double batch of dough and got 61 little Martians.I would definitely make these cookies again. They're an unusual and attractive little treat!
Recipe: "Green Tea Sweets" from Amai Tea & Bake Shop, recipe available here.
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