Matcha Shortbread Cookies - 2 Ways

Since St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner I figured I'd add to all the green foods that show up this time of year.  

And believe it or not I've never made shortbread before even though shortbread cookies are one of my favs.  The dough is so simple to make - butter (and lots of butter), flour, sugar, salt and to green it up I added some matcha.  Matcha is green tea powder and if you like green tea then you'll LOVE matcha.  Plus it gives everything a neat green color.

I used small cookie cutters to cut out the little flower shapes but also added some of the dough to my madeleine pan.

Bake shortbread about 12 -15 minutes but don't over bake or the cookies will be too brown and you definitely want to see the color matcha gave them! (You can see my madeleines are a bit too browned when they came out of the pan - newbie move!)

I added a little matcha to some vanilla buttercream and slathered a bit between 2 of the cut out cookies.  A big green sprinkle added makes them look like little happy flowers.  

Or drizzle with some melted green candy wafers and other sprinkles and you have a neat green treat for St. Patrick's Day.  Enjoy with a cup of green tea or coffee!

Have an awesome weekend and thanks for popping by!

The matcha shortbread recipe can be found here on Martha Stewart

mini chocolate & green tea cupcakes

For Jack's international day at school this week...being half chinese I thought I'd bring in something kinda asian....I was going to do all green tea cupcakes with green tea cream cheese frosting, but my un-even oven decided to burn half the batch. Luckily the dunkin hines double chocolate cake mix was still hanging around. Either way both kinds were really tasty! Here's the recipe for the cake and icing. This recipe uses matcha green tea which is a powdered green tea used in making green tea ice cream, japanese desserts, and tea of course (it makes a great green tea latte).

The chinese symbol says "friendship" (at least according to google translator it does!) which I thought was apropos for his last year at the school he's in now since he won't see some of these kids in his new school next year. It's just melted chocolate candy wafers, that was piped onto parchment paper over a copy of the symbols.

I like green tea and the flavor was not over powering to me, although Jack said he didn't like the frosting (the same kid who when I told him I was bringing in cupcakes for his party pretty much yelled, "no more cupcakes mommy"...obviously I didn't listen to him.)