Green Tea and White Chocolate Cookies

Baking with tea or powdered tea is a wonderful way to add very interesting flavors to cakes and cookies. I have baked Earl Grey Cookies and Green Tea Shortbread and Cupcakes before and made Chai-Spiced Honey Bundt Cakes (see also my post of Feb. 10, 2012) and was always intrigued by the taste that the different teas, whetther in powdered from, ground up or used as an infusion, add to baked goods. So when I came across a recipe for Green Tea and White Chocolate Cookies on Nami´s fantastic blog called Just one Cookbook, I knew that I had to try out her recipe.

The cookies are very pretty when baked and mine had a pronounced flavor of green tea which I adore. The white chocolate added not only a nice visual effect but tasted wonderful in combination with the green tea. Just make sure that you use a really good quality white chocolate such as Lindt.

The powdered green tea that I used in this recipe is called “Matcha” and since it is quite expensive, you should not skimp on the other ingredients for the cookie and try to use the best ingredients that you can get.

I chose to give some of these cookies as gifts and instead of packing them in cookies tins, I went to my favorite Asian market and bought the smallest steamer baskets with matching covers that I could find. I placed a layer of brown unbleached parchment paper at the bottom of the baskets and just placed the cookies inside – just make sure that you let the recipient know that the cookies should be wrapped if they intend to keep them for a few days.

The recipe for these amazing and pretty cookies can be found on Nami´s blog! Thank you for sharing this fantastic recipe Nami!

Sources:

• Japan Matcha Yume Organic from “Tee Gschwendner” (http://www.teagschwendner.com)
• Lindt Excellence White Chocolate from "Lindt" (http://www.lindt.com)
• Table linens from "Butlers" (http://www.butlers.de)