By: Valerie
Cookies, Bars and Biscotti, ,

Green Tea Sesame Ginger Wafers

Yield: 4 dozen cookies
Recipe: 138/200
“Back to Baking”, pp. 31

    For the last recipe in my month-long challenge, I wanted to make something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but haven’t because I was always missing one ingredient. These green tea sesame ginger wafers require matcha green tea powder, something that I think is safe to say most people do not casually have in their pantry. However, I have decided that the days that I don’t do a recipe simply because I do not have an ingredient are behind me! I finally purchased the matcha and made this recipe.

    These cookies were fun to make. I always enjoy these slice cookies where you just mix all the ingredients together, form a long log, let it chill for a few hours and then slice them into nice and classic cookies. This recipe is effortless and, as a bonus, makes a large quantity of cookies with not too much additional effort. I especially enjoyed seeing the dough becoming green after the addition of the matcha powder, and I love the smell too!

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
  • 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 ⅔ cups cake and pastry flour *
  • 1 teaspoon matcha green tea powder
  • ¾ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ cup sesame seeds

    These cookies turned out lovely and taste good. I was expecting more of a kick from the ginger I must say, and I wouldn’t have minded a bit more matcha flavour to come through, but they are nonetheless tasty and make for a perfect little evening snack to go with tea. They look particularly pretty with the green tea colour and the sesame coating around the edge. I just so happened to have both black and the classic white sesame seeds so I used both and I think this looked quite pleasing, but it is definitely not necessary. Cute little cookies!

Directions:

  1. Cream together the butter, icing sugar and fresh ginger until smooth.
  2. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
  3. Sift the flour, green tea powder, cream of tartar and salt over the butter mixture. Stir well until blended.
  4. Divide the dough, now green, into three equal pieces and shape them into logs, about 10 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter. This can be done more easily by putting the dough on plastic wrap, and using it to help elongate and roll out the dough, lifting one side of the plastic wrap to reposition it after rolling. Wrap and chill until firm, at least 3 hours.
    • If not using all the dough, you can wrap it very well in plastic wrap, then again in aluminium foil or a plastic bag and store the unused dough in the freezer until ready to bake. It can be stored frozen up to 3 months.
    • I myself prefer larger cookies to smaller ones, so if that’s the case for you you can always from logs that are about 2 inches in diameter but shorter. The size of the log does not really matter, as long as they are sliced about the same thickness to keep the baking time the same.
  5. Preheat oven to 325°F and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
  6. Sprinkle the sesame seeds onto a plate, unwrap the chilled dough and roll the logs into the sesame seeds to coat the outsides. You may have to press a little to make sure that the sesame seeds adhere to the dough.
  7. Cut rounds of cookie dough as thinly as possible, about ⅛ inch thick, and place them one inch apart on the baking tray.
    • I myself obtained much more than 4 dozen cookies. I’m talking about 10 dozen cookies! I don’t know why because my logs were the same size as the recipe suggested (10×1 inches) and I sliced them even thicker than recommended, but I did get about 40 cookies per log, so that’s a lot of cookies!
  8. Bake for about 8-10 minutes, just until the outside edges of the cookies begin to colour. Let the cookies cool on the tray before removing.

Valerie