Sunday, December 12, 2010

A Month of Cookies-Whipped Matcha Shortbread Cookies-18

Christmas baking would not be complete without a little shortbread.  I have this recipe for whipped shortbread that I really love.  It is light from all the whipping and if you catch them before they brown......perfect in every way.  The trick is to catch them at the very first sign of browning.  With the addition of Match powder to the recipe this is a little more tricky than without due to the strong colour addition.  This batch is a hint more browned than I would like...following batches will be baked 1 minute less.  It can be tricky too using a cookie press as the temperature of the dough is critical.  Ideally you should bake one cookie to calculate out the required baking time before baking a whole sheet of cookies.....but as you can see I am lazy.  If your house is very warm, the dough can quite easily become too soft.  A few minutes in the fridge solves this problem however......and if you are finding it all too frustrating....you can just roll them in balls and flatten them with a fork.  I found the dough almost impossible to stop eating with the Matcha powder added....YUM.
Perfect Whipped Matcha Shortbread Trees
1 lb butter, room temperature
1 cup icing sugar (confectioners)
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup corn starch
2 1/2 Tbsp Matcha Powder
3 cups flour
Preheat oven to 350F.  Cream the softened butter, icing sugar, vanilla and salt until creamy.  Add matcha powder and mix in.  Add corn starch and beat in with electric mixer. Add in flour 1 cup at a time beating with electric mixer between additions.  Beat until fluffy....about 3-5 minutes with electric mixer.  Put dough in a cookie press and press desired shapes onto cold cookie sheet.  Bake about 5-7 minutes for cookie press shapes or longer if you are rolling and flattening balls of cookie dough.  Stop baking at the first hint of browning.  Let set two minutes on the cookie sheets before removing to wire racks to complete the cooling.

No comments: