Green Tea Butterball Cookies

Happy Christmas Eve! This past week has been so hectic and busy. I thought that I’d have lots more time to bake and blog, since I’m on break, but I’ve barely spent any time in the kitchen at all! Other than to eat lots of fabulous home-cooking of course 🙂 In between shopping for Christmas gifts, seeing old friends, and spending quality time with the fam, I haven’t had much time to devote to baking, my one true love!

This also means that I haven’t been eating as much dessert as usual. As you know, I love sweets, so I eat dessert daily. Sometimes I even have multiple desserts throughout the day! But since I haven’t been baking as much, my dessert intake has decreased significantly. For the first couple of days, I REALLY missed it, and I would raid the pantry after dinner in search of some chocolate to satisfy my sweet tooth, but I actually feel better now that I’m not consuming so much sugar.

Yesterday, though, my mom decided that I would help her bake holiday treats to give to our church members. Of course I didn’t mind because it gave me yet another excuse to procrastinate on my grad school applications, and we had a lovely time baking all morning and afternoon. But the best part was sampling all of the tasty treats! We made maple-pecan pie squares, cranberry orange cream scones, my mom’s amazing oatmeal cookies (recipe will be posted in the near future!), and green tea butterball cookies.

This was my first time making these green tea butterball cookies, which are pretty similar to Mexican wedding cookies in taste and texture, except for the unmistakable green tea flavor. These darling cookies are light and crumbly and nutty and buttery. Scrumptious! Wrapped up in colored cellophane and tied with sparkly ribbon, they make a lovely holiday gift 🙂

Green Tea Butterball Cookies

Source: Justeen’s mom’s recipe box

Ingredients

• 180 grams cake flour
• 40 grams confectioner’s sugar, plus more for rolling cookies in
• 10 grams green tea powder (matcha)
• 60 grams almond meal
• 120 grams unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together green tea powder, cake flour, and confectioner’s sugar. Whisk in almond meal.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together butter, vanilla extract, and almond extract until light and fluffy. Beat in the dry ingredients until incorporated. Dough will be dry and crumbly, but should hold together when squeezed.

4. Form dough into 3/4-inch balls and place them on a large baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven for about 23-25 minutes.

5. Cool cookies completely on a wire rack. Roll cookies in confectioner’s sugar and store in an airtight container at room temperature.