Celebrating the Holidays with A Matcha Cookie Tree

December 31, 2021

The holidays are upon us again this year. Originally, the plan was for my family to visit Kev and I in Mass, but due to the ongoing pandemic, my family decided to postpone until the future. This means the holidays this year will be just Kev and I again. Kev usually requests some form of Chinese food during the holidays. His favorite are obviously soup dumplings, which I made plenty of for the holiday season last year. We simplified Christmas this year with a much simpler meal consisting of my mom’s rice cakes featuring lap cheung, dried baby shrimps, scallions, and minced garlic. For dessert, instead of the matcha chocolate log roll I made last year for Christmas, I scaled back on baking and made a simple matcha cookie tree decorated with vanilla buttercream and some festive gold sprinkles. More to come on the matcha cookie tree in a little bit. Going back to our Christmas celebration, we had to scale back on desserts this year because of all the holiday treats we’ve been indulging in lately. Kev and I have been snacking on chocolate biscuits, over-the-top hot chocolate, and savory holiday snacks. The pre-pandemic holidays are usually a time where we head back to New York City to visit family. Kev always looks forward to the trip because he knows we typically make a trip out to Manhattan or Queens just so he could get his fix of soup dumplings. It’s his absolute favorite food in the entire world and he requests it all the time for special occasions. I started making soup dumplings back when I lived in Ohio because of how difficult it was to access legit soup dumplings in Ohio. The soup dumplings do take some effort to prepare at home, but it’s usually worth the effort just to see the joy on Kev’s face as he enjoys the soup dumplings. This year, for our simplified Christmas celebration, I spent the morning FaceTiming mom to learn how to prepare her rice cakes. I had initially planned on making turnip cakes, but somehow, I forgot to pick up turnips at the Asian grocery store earlier in the week. My mom’s solution was to make rice cakes instead, another savory dish I ate a ton of growing up in Brooklyn. I followed my mom’s instructions for the rice cakes to the best of my ability and they turned out pretty well given the instructions from my mom often lack measurements. (I’m currently working on refining the recipe to share in a later post.) While I was preparing the rice cakes, I set out the ingredients I would use to make my matcha cookie tree. I first developed these matcha cookies last year when trying to create a matcha version of a butter cookie. When testing out the recipe last year in the days leading up to the holiday season, I played around with different types of flours and ratios of ingredients until I came up with the ideal combination of an all-purpose flour and cake flour blend. The all-purpose flour allowed the cookies to maintain a firmer structure, while the cake flour helped the cookies achieve the perfect tenderness. When combined together, I was able to get a cookie with the perfect balance of tenderness and structure. Instead of just matcha cookies, I divided the batter in half and made a raspberry version featuring freeze-dried raspberries grounded into a powder form. The raspberry version ended up developing a deeper purplish color rather than a vibrant red. The matcha cookies came out a perfect shade of light green. As I was piping out the cookies, I took care to pipe out different sizes for my vision of a stacked holiday cookie tree. The cookies did not take long to bake at all. Ten minutes in the oven was all the cookies needed to reach the perfect consistency. The cookies are amazing straight out of the oven, but they also stay perfectly tender as they cool to room temperature. Letting the cookies cool before decorating them is essential for building the holiday cookie tree. When the cookies have cooled sufficiently, I whipped together the simplest vanilla buttercream using just unsalted butter, confectioners’ sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. I even brought out my festive gold sprinkles for decorating the holiday cookie tree. Building the holiday cookie tree was the fun part. I started by dabbing on some buttercream frosting and placing the largest cookie at the bottom of a small cake stand. Then, I started layering on smaller cookies and adding layers of buttercream frosting in between each of the cookies. When I finished building the tree, I moved onto decorating the tree with gold sprinkles to ensure the frosting did not harden before the sprinkles have adhered to the tree. Once I finished decorating the tree, I had to set it out to snap some photos before serving it up as the centerpiece dessert for our dinner. The holiday cookie tree was so pretty, neither Kev nor I wanted to cut into it. We wanted to soak in the lovely dessert for just a bit longer before enjoying it. As we rounded out our dinner with a simple stir-fried rice noodle and yu choy, we sat around our Christmas tree just a while longer to enjoy the final moments of Christmas before the clock struck midnight. Our Christmas holiday was finally complete. Hopefully, by next year, we will be able to gather with family once more. Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

For the matcha cookie tree:
(makes two cookie trees)

For the matcha cookies:

· 1½ sticks (¾ cup) unsalted butter, cut into cubes, room temperature
· ¾ cup granulated sugar
· ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
· 2 large eggs, room temperature
· 1 cup all-purpose flour
· 1¼ cup cake flour
· ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
· ½ tablespoon matcha powder

For the vanilla buttercream frosting:

· 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
· ¾-1 cup confectioners’ sugar
· 1-2 tablespoons heavy cream
· ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For the rest of the cookie tree:

· festive sprinkles*

*I used rounded gold sprinkles to resemble ornaments, but feel free to use any sprinkles you have on hand.

Directions:

1) Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2) In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars. Add in the eggs, one at a time, and combine until incorporated.

3) Gently fold in the flours, salt, and matcha powder. Mix all ingredients together until well combined.

4) Place a large star tip in a pastry decorating bag. Fill the bag with the cookie dough. Pipe the cookie dough in a circle starting in the center and slowly extended outward creating swirls. Keep the piped cookie dough swirls as close to one another as possible. Start with a fairly large cookie (about 5 swirls) and gradually pipe smaller cookies. Continue piping smaller and smaller cookies with less and less swirls until you form a tiny cookie (about 1 swirl).

5) Bake the cookies at 350°F for 10 minutes. Remove the sheet pan with the cookies from the oven and let the cookies cool for at least an hour before decorating.

6) When ready to decorate the cookies, make the buttercream by combining the unsalted butter and confectioners’ sugar (¼ cup at a time). Gradually add more confectioners’ sugar as needed. If the buttercream gets too thick to mix, slowly add the heavy cream (½ a tablespoon at a time). If the buttercream gets too soft, add more confectioners’ sugar. Keep blending together the buttercream until the buttercream reaches a creamy, pipeable yet still firm consistency.

7) Snip off the end of a small decorating piping bag, add a tiny star tip, and fill the piping bag with the vanilla buttercream frosting. Start with the largest cookie and pipe a small amount of frosting at the bottom flat side of the cookie. Adhere the cookie to a serving plate or stand. Pipe small amounts of frosting around the edges of the large cookie and a few in the center. Gently place a slightly smaller cookie on top of the larger cookie. Continue piping small amounts of frosting around the edges of the cookie and the center of the cookie. Place another smaller cookie on top of the piped cookie. Continue this process of stacking and piping frosting onto the cookies until the very last tiny cookie. Pipe small amounts of frosting in a circle around the very top of the tiny cookie. Work quickly and gently to decorate the cookie tree with festive sprinkles.

8) Snap some photos of the cookie tree, marvel in your delightful creation, and enjoy.

Takeaways: The cookie dough can be a bit difficult to pipe out using a star tip. A trick that works for me is to use smaller piping bags for easier control. I just fill the smaller piping bag about ¾ of the way full with the cookie dough and use some gentle force to pipe out the cookie dough. Other variations of the cookies can be achieved by grinding up freeze-dried fruits. When making the cookies this time, I did end up dividing the batter in half, grinding up a couple ounces of freeze-dried raspberries until they become a powder and sprinkling in the powdered freeze-dried raspberries into half of the cookie dough. The other portion of the cookie dough was reserved for the matcha cookie tree.