Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve or Merry Christmas depending where you are! To get into a little creative mood, I made green tea Christmas tree cookies for our families.

Green Tea Cookies

Adapted from The Cookiepedia: Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics

(Makes about 18 Christmas tree cookies)

3/4 cup of powdered sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of matcha powder

1/2 cup of unsalted butter

3 egg yolks

1 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour

A pinch of salt

1. Gently mix the powdered sugar and matcha powder together.
2. Add in the butter and beat it all together until smooth. It'll look like spinach green icing!
3. Add in the egg yolks and beat until incorporated, scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Pour in a third of the flour at a time. It will take a minute or so for the flour to absorb into the dough. Also add in the pinch of salt and mix. Make sure that there are no dry or crumbly sections in the dough.
5. Flatten the dough into a disk and plastic wrap it. Seal it up and let it chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
6. Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F).
7. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out to about 1/2-inch thick. Cut out shapes with your preferred cookie cutter. Set them on a parchment sheet or silicone mat.
8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until you see the edges start to turn lightly golden. Cool before decorating.

You can eat the cookies as they are, but if you want to dress them up like sugar cookies, you'll need to make some royal icing.

Green Tea Royal Icing

(Makes enough to line and flood 18 Christmas tree cookies)

1 1/2 tablespoon of meringue powder

2 cups of powdered sugar

1 tablespoon of matcha powder

2 1/2 tablespoons of water

1. Beat all the ingredients together until icing forms peaks. I would recommend using a clean and grease free stand mixer. You can add more green colour if you like, but I found the light green from the matcha powder to be sufficient.
2. This is your stiff consistency, have your piping bag and tip ready, fill about a handful of royal icing into the bag.
3. Pipe along the edges of your cookies, refill if necessary. Add any remaining icing back to the batch.
4. To thin out the royal icing for flooding, keep adding 1 teaspoon of water until you reach the proper consistency.
5. Using the same piping bag and tip, carefully fill it with the thinner icing and pipe them onto the cookie. By now, the edges should have hardened enough to stay as a border. Decorate as you see fit!

Use clean toothpicks for correcting, if you need to slightly shift a line or pop an air bubble. I clearly need to work on my cookie piping skills.

I really like the look of the simple hollies on the tree.

I have an extra copy of Stacy Adimando and Tara Striano's The Cookiepedia: Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics. Would you like to win it? Our Christmas gift to one lucky winner!

Giveaway Regulations and Conditions: 

• The Cookiepedia Giveaway is open from Saturday, December 24, 2011 to Sunday, January 8, 2012. Entries submitted after 12 midnight EST on Sunday, January 8, 2012 will not be considered. 
• There are three ways to enter, post in the comment section below or on A Baked Creation's facebook page: I could eat ______________ cookies all year long. (Fill in the blank with your favourite cookie.) 
• To enter via twitter, tweet: @abakedcreation I could eat ______________ cookies all year long. (Fill in the blank with your favourite cookie.)
• Please leave a way for us to contact you (via e-mail, twitter handle).
• The winner will be randomly chosen and announced here on A Baked Creation on Monday, January 10, 2012. 
• The winner will have 7 days to claim their prize. If we do not get a mailing address, the prize is forfeited.
• This contest is available to residents of Canada and the U.S.A. only! However, if you have friends and family with a Canadian or American mailing address, feel free to enter. There will be four different winners, one for each book.
• Disclaimer: My copy and the giveaway copy of The Cookiepedia was not sent to us by the publisher.
• UPDATE: A winner has been chosen! Congratulations to SweetThingsTO who said, "I could eat chocolate peanut butter cookies all year long... or anything chocolate peanut butter actually..."