Almond Green Tea (Matcha) Cookies

First off, let my start this post by saying just HOW LONG this stinkin photo shoot took me. For goodness sake, I wasted so much time on this that it's not even funny. But no, I'm not complaining.....

Okay, so these little things are pretty self explanatory. Almond meal, green tea powder, eggs, butter, sugar...nothing out of the ordinary. But these cookies weren't an automatic success.

The dough came together in a matter of seconds. Whisk the sugar and green tea powder together, cream that with the butter, add the almond meal and the eggs, and you're done. But it's what came after that that scared me off.

The dough required chilling, which was pretty normal in a sense that these were, in fact, cookies. However, things started to get out of control afterwards.

I rolled the dough up into a log and put it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes, since that's what the recipe said. (*note to self: recipes aren't always right.)

Then I took them out after half an hour and sliced a dozen for the first cookie sheet. Alright, the slicing was seriously a nightmare. The dough wasn't firm enough and I had zero patience so I just went in with my ultra sharp knife and cut 1/2-inch slices.

I coated them in some normal sugar, then baked them for 12 minutes, since that was the minimum time stated on the recipe. I pulled them out to take a peek and make sure they were done, and they didn't looked cooked. Alright, no biggie, back in the oven.

But I had to do this twice until the cookie tops actually started cracking. I even lifted them up a bit to check the bottoms, and they were just floppy. Back into the oven again, and in all, I had to bake the first batch for a whole TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES. That's roughly how long it takes to bake a standard sized cake.

I broke one and took a bite--it was cakey. Cakey-ness in a cookies is always a big fat NO. Cake and cookies shouldn't even be combined in one thing. I tossed them into the bin and decided to chill the rest of the dough for a little bit longer, a "little bit" meaning 1.5 hours. 

From then on the slicing was just super duper easy and everything fell in place (yay!). However, baking time-wise....I actually had to bake every single batch for AT LEAST 20 something minutes. That is crazy OUTRAGEOUS for a cookie recipe. And they weren't even a touch overdone. Just kinda hard-ish like a thick green tea cookie should be.

All in all, these cookies turned out well, I'd say. (Well, they have to be--I'm giving them away!) But I'd say the recipe definitely could use some tweaking. 

Next up will be Twix Chocolate Chip cookies, which have been on my baking bucket list for ages. Stay tuned!

Happy baking!