Greentea Cookies

 

These lovely fluffy textured cookies require some moulded form like a mini pizza tray (most of you probably haven’t got one). I used cookie cutters and greased them prior of pouring the dough into them on a baking tray (yes the dough supposed to be liquid). For these cookies, you would need matcha green tea, which is a  special Japanese, very fine powder tea. You can get it at any specialty tea stores

Fat for the form/cutters

100 g butter

60 g minced pistachios

50 g + 2 tsp icing sugar

50 g flour

4 egg whites

60 g ground almonds (with no skin)

a good pinch of matcha green tea

70 g sugar

60 g dried cranberries

1. Place the greased cutter forms on the baking tray (line it with parchment paper first). Heat up the oven ( 175 ; Gas mark 2). Melt the butter and grind the pistachios. Then whisk with a mixer the melted butter, 50 g of icing sugar, pistachios, almonds, flour, tea powder, eggs and sugar.

2. Depending on how many cookie cutters you have, pour half of the dough into the cutters ( a tsp per cutter should be fine) and decorate the cookies with some cranberries. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. Take out the cookies, let them cool down a bit and then sprinkle them with a bit of icing sugar

Mocca Nut Rolls

I made those heavenly cookies on the first weekend after submitting my master thesis. I was so relieved to have finally spare time, so I spent most of that weekend cooking and baking.

257 g flour

100 g ground hazelnuts

75 g sugar, salt

1 pack of vanilla sugar

2,5 tsp cocoa powder

4 tsp of cold strong espresso

200 g cold butter

200 g dark chocolate

2 egg yolks

cling film

1. Mix nuts, flour, vanilla sugar, 2 tsp of cocoa, a pinch of salt, egg yolks, espresso and butter flakes in a bowl and knead the mass either with a mixer or with your bare hands (watch your manicure girls!) to a smooth dough. Divide the dough into 8 parts and make a roll of each part (ca. 42 cm long). Wrap the rolls into the cling film and put them into the fridge for an hour or so.

2. Heat up the oven ( 200 C). Place parchment paper on the baking tray. Cut each roll into ca. 7 pieces and put them on the tray and bake them for 11-13 minutes. Let them cool down and put another part of rolls on the tray (you may have to do this two to three times, depending on how many rolls you made)

3. Cut the chocolate into small pieces and let it melt on a water bath. Dip the ends of the mocca rolls into the warm chocolate and let them dry. Sprinkle them with some cocoa powder