One of our favorite teas has found a new home!

Our certified organic Matcha Tea now comes packaged in a beautifully designed tin! Functional and reusable, these tins will keep your precious Matcha powder protected from light and incredibly fresh.

Matcha is a very special green tea with deep historical roots in Japanese tea ceremonies. To produce this delicacy, the sweet and tender young leaves of Camellia sinensis are ground to a fine powder. When you drink Matcha, you consume the entire green tea leaf, which is alive with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Whether whisked hot in the traditional preparation or combined with milk and honey poured over ice, Matcha offers a truly remarkable flavor experience.

I remember my first sip of Matcha. Its grassy sweetness and soft melon nose enchanted me. It was gently stimulating and gave a bright boost of mental clarity. With that first sip, I was in bliss. Since that day, I’ve experimented with the powder as an ingredient in baked goodies and other sweet treats. This amazing Matcha cookie recipe is adapted from Smitten Kitchen and includes a vanilla bean glaze! So good, you’ll crave the last crumb.

Matcha Shortbread Cookies with Vanilla Bean Glaze

Cookie Dough Ingredients

2 cups organic flour

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup organic powdered sugar

3 tablespoons organic matcha powder

2 sticks (1 cup) organic unsalted butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Vanilla Bean Glaze Ingredients

4 ounces organic white chocolate, chopped into very small pieces

3 to 4 tablespoons organic heavy cream

½ organic vanilla bean, split and scraped

Directions

Sift the dry cookie dough ingredients together in a small bowl. In another bowl, whip the softened butter by hand or with an electric mixer until just smooth. Add the almond extract to the butter and then combine with all of the dry ingredients. Divide the dough in half and shape into two discs. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill the discs for an hour or two in the refrigerator until completely firm.

Lightly flour your work surface, as well as the top of your dough, and roll out to about an 1/8”. Cut rolled dough with your favorite cookie cutters and place them on parchment paper lined baking sheets. They don’t expand much at all, so don’t worry about creating lots of space between the cookies. Bake them in a preheated oven at 325°F for 10-15 minutes or until lightly golden at the edges.

To make the glaze, split half of a vanilla bean and scrape out the seed pulp. Reserve the pulp and toss the outer pod into your bottle of homemade vanilla extract. Slowly heat the chopped white chocolate in a double boiler and stir until melted. Make sure your white chocolate is good quality with just a few basic organic ingredients! Stir in the vanilla bean seed pulp. Slowly add heavy cream, one tablespoon at a time, stirring until smooth. Cool glaze in the refrigerator, stirring every few minutes until firm enough to spread. Allow cookies to cool completely and then spread glaze on your cookies with a butter knife.

Once you’ve glazed all of your cookies, shock them in the freezer for 5 minutes to firm up the glaze. Once set, they will be ready to serve at room temperature.

Grab, eat, and wait for the happy mmmms to sound!

This entry was posted on 10 February 2012 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Herbal Goodies, Recipes and DIY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.