Green Tea Cookies
Okay, so this is more of a tease. I’m not going to include the recipe, or directions to make these cookies. The only other person who knows my recipe is my roommate, Janis Yee, and (possibly now) my lovely sister, Helen Wang. Many of you do know, I have a thing for green tea and I have a special place in my heart for my green tea cookies.
What’s the story behind these? well, I fell in love with green tea in high school.
One day, my Japanese teacher (ささ先生）hosted a Japanese green tea ceremony for my class. The whole class period was dedicated to this ceremony. My classmates and I helped mix the green tea powder, and my teacher poured the tea into bowls. Once I sipped the Matcha green tea, I was in awe. It was so soothing. I felt at peace. I love the color, the texture of green tea powder, the taste, and the fresh scent of matcha green tea.
Then, for the following Christmas of my senior year in high school, I started baking. I had a ton of hungry guy friends with empty stomachs who could not cook to save their lives, so I was already in the habit of basically “feeding” them, by making them a chicken pesto panini or baked goods. Before winterbreak, I spent some time thinking of creating something to bake for everyone. And I started with Matcha green tea.
1) It has soothing properties.
2) It’s very popular in Japan. And…who doesn’t like Japanese stuff?
3) It doesn’t need that much sugar to be enjoyable (unlike chocolate)
4) It’s different from the ordinary chocolate brownie or chocolate chip cookie.
So around the time of finals, I did some research on baking green tea and I tried out different green tea cookie recipes. After some adjustments, I baked green tea cookies and slipped them into paper brown bags and decorated them with written notes (with things like “thanks” and “hope your finals go well” and “hope these make you happy” [smiley face here and smiley face there]) I made sure they/their families would receive them at by Christmas, in celebration of the holidays. If I couldn’t meet them around campus, I’d walk or drive to their house and deliver it to them.
So there you have it. For Christmas, I sometimes stuff these cookies with azuki/red beans, but since some people are bound to not like red beans, I usually just stick to these simple green tea cookies.
