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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Green Tea Sugar Cookies

One of the best parts of having this blog is hearing from readers. Whether it's via comment on an entry, a post on my facebook wall, or through the grapevine from my mom, it's always fun to get feedback from people who are trying the recipes on The Sweets Life. Please, keep the communication coming! I want to know what you like, what you hate, which recipes didn't turn out for you, etc. etc.! Have a request for something? Send it my way!

This post came about as the result of one of my readers, Emma from The Hearty Heart, contacted me about a recipe featuring green tea, since she wanted to do a post on the nutritional myths and facts surrounding green tea and then show her readers how they could use green tea in recipes. I happily obliged and set to work researching green tea in recipes. I originally planned to make a smoothie that featured green tea, since my friend Maggie has been raving about the green tea addition to smoothies. But the thought of sipping on a smoothie while I'm sitting in my long underwear next to the space heater was not appealing and I chose to go in a different direction. It turns out you can use green tea in all sorts of baked goods! Being that it's the Christmas season and I can't get enough of Christmas cookies, I chose to make some green tea sugar cookies.

These actually tasted very similar to my favorite sugar cookies, but every so often I'd get a hint of green tea taste. Since I'm a daily green tea drinker, I loved this added flavor. While these snowflakes were a little bit of a pain to cut out and frost, the effort was worth it when I saw how cute they looked on my Christmas platter. 

Thank you Emma for giving me the change to try something new! For those of you interested in reading more about green tea, check out her post here. To those of you who stopped by from Emma's blog, thanks for checking out The Sweets Life and I hope you come back for more recipes!



One Year Ago: Strip Steak with Rosemary Wine Sauce


Green Tea Sugar Cookies

inspired by Feeding the Boys

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup unsalted butter
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 egg
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
-1/8 cup half and half (can substitute milk)
-1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/4 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-3 tsp matcha powder (I had some matcha that wasn't yet powder, so I ground in my food processor)

Directions:
1. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add egg, vanilla extract, and half and half, mixing until blended.
2. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and matcha powder. In 3 batches, add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing after each addition.
3. Cover bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour, until dough is well chilled.
4. On a floured surface, roll out dough and cut into desired shapes.
5. Bake at 350F for 7-10 minutes (depending on size and thickness of cookies), until bottoms are lightly browned.
6. Cool on wire rack completely.
**If you want to frost, mix powdered sugar with a little bit of half and half (I don't have measurements, I just mix a little bit at a time until I get the consistency I want) and color with food coloring. Use a knife to frost cookies.