Confessions of A Wanna Be Cook

saturatead:

Sorry for the delay, I haven’t had a free second to type this up!I also apologize for the bad photos. My actual camera is being held hostage by Ampersand, so I took these with my phone.

Rest assured, these are the creamiest cookies you will ever taste.

Here they are! I cannibalized a couple of butter cookie recipes, so I guess it counts as my recipe. The one that called for tea called for Earl Grey, and for 1/4 of the tea I put in. So there. Also, I’m kind of an apathetic baker in that I tend to eyeball. I hope you can forgive me.

Anyway, here’s my sassy recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 6 T milk oolong
• 2 pinches salt
• 1 cup butter, softened (just leave it out overnight)
• 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1 dash almond extract (I bet vanilla would do brilliantly as well)
• Anti-ingredient: I know it’s tempting, but don’t add anything large to this recipe. By “large” I mean chocolate chips, bits of nut, or anything of the kind. You need the dough to be soft and granule-less
• Optional: Halved almonds or halved walnuts or something to put on top of the cookies but not in them

Utensils (I don’t understand why most cookbooks don’t list utensils)

• 2 mixing bowls. They don’t need to be too large. One should hold at least 20oz, the other at least 30oz
• Mortar and pestle, coffee grinder, or some other utensil that will allow you to grind the tea. Extra points if you have a sifter
• A spatula or whatever your favored mixing utensil is
• Wax paper, which should work better than the aluminum foil I used. Though, again, aluminum foil worked for me
• A sharp knife
• At least one cookie sheet
• Oven, freezer

Process

1. Grind the milk oolong somehow. Curse under your breath when you realize how many twigs and sharp bits milk oolong has. If you do have a sifter, use it now. You wanna end up with what is basically milk oolong matcha.
2. Mix the faux matcha, flour, and salt in the smaller mixing bowl.
3. Mix butter, sugar, and splash of almond extract in the larger bowl. Now mix them more. And more. Make this as soft and homogeneous as you can.
4. Add the flour mix to the butter mix, bit by bit.
5. Divide in two.
6. Place one half on the wax paper, or aluminum foil, or whatever you’ve found for this. It will stick to the aluminum foil, but not super-badly. Holding the ends of the paper up, roll the dough around a bit to convince it to look like a vaguely-cylindrical log. If you’ve ever owned a diabolo, now’s the time to impress your friends with those gyrating abilities. Try to make them about 2in in diameter.
7. Fold the paper over the log and close the ends, kinda like a candy wrapper.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the second half of dough. Slash for the rest of the dough.
9. Stick these logs in the freezer for at least an hour (but no more than 2. If you need to go elsewhere for a while and then pick back up, I’d recommend putting them in the fridge while you’re gone, then half an hour in the freezer when you get back). You may want to put them on top of something hard so they remain straight and not snakey. I put my logs on top of a tupperware lid.
10. Preheat your oven to 350F.
11. Take the logs out of the freezer, cut them into slices between 1/4in and 1/2in.
12. Lay them out on an ungreased pan (or two), about 1/2in to 1in apart. If you want to put halved almonds or something atop them before baking, now’s your time!
13. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Watch them closely! You don’t want them to actually change color, only to get kinda golden around the edges.
14. Eat the whole cookie sheet, feel guilty for eating your friends’ cookies, repeat steps 1-13.

(Extra tip: drink some gyokuro on the side. Trust me.)

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