Match (Green Tea) Honey Spritz Cookie

 Originally we were going to give 2 bottles of wine per person for wedding favours. One day my hubby had and idea and asked why don't we do cookies and wine. I wasn't too thrill with the idea since we already have all the wine but I figured we can drink it ourselves if we want to.
So I decided to make green tea heart shape cookies since it's a recipe I've done before.

The nice thing about these cookies is that it's freezable so you can make them well ahead of time. The most I've tried freezing these cookies before eating them is 1 month. Since I know 1 month will work great, that's how far ahead I made the cookies.

I saran wrapped pairs of cookies so I can easily put them into the favour bags the day before the wedding.
I got these pretty favour bags on the left from China.

I found filling the gun to be very time consuming. Even more time consuming then it is to make the cookies and squeeze out each cookie. Since I had to make 200 cookies, I had 2 cookie guns going. I would fill while my hubby would squeeze it out.

The heart shape from the Wilson cookie gun isn't as good as you can see from the picture on the left.
It looks a bit weird but the cookie gun is easy to use.

I borrowed the second cookie gun from my friend.
Her's is an Italian brand cookie gun. It's harder to use but the heart shapes turn out a lot better as seen in the picture on the right.

Overall, the product taste good so I cared less about the shape.

Match Honey Spritz Cookie

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp matcha
• 180g non bleach all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 113.5g butter
• 50g sugar
• 1 egg
• 50g honey
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F.
2. In a bowl, mix together the matcha, flour, baking powder and salt. 
3. In another bowl, cream the butter until fluffy using a stand mixer or a hand mixer. 
4. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla to the butter and beat until evenly mixed and fluffy.
5. Add the dry mixture to the ingredients and mix until the dry ingredients is just incorporated. The dough should look shaggy and somewhat fluffy.
6. Check if the dough is too wet, if it is, add more flour.
7. Load the dough into the cookie gun and press the dough onto a cold, ungreased cookie sheet.
8. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until the cookies are lightly golden brown around the edges. Remove from heat and onto cooling grid.

Enjoy :)

Birthday Cupcakes Oct 2014 - Strawberry Buttercream and Lemon Buttercream

It's been a while since I posted since I was crazy busy with moving and the wedding. But I finally did something I want to post about (besides my wedding cake, I'll do that when I get the official pictures)

This year we celebrated 4 birthdays at the same time as Thanksgiving. My husband, brother, niece and nephew are all born in October.
So what sort of cake do I make to celebrate 4 birthdays?
This year I went with cupcakes! Multiple for everyone.

Actually I was super excited this year to try out a new buttercream recipe.
I recently experimented with Swiss Buttercream and found out just how big of a difference methods contributes to the final product!
I used the exact same egg white:butter:sugar ratio as I normally do for my Italian Meringue Buttercream (minus the water because I don't need it anymore) and it was amazing!
It was every fluffier then normal!
I was so happy. This is now my new go to method.

Ratio-wise I'm still playing with it to see if I can decrease the butter and sugar a bit more to see if it'll get even fluffier.
I'll eventually settle on something I really like.
I also need to check if making my own butter helped too. That was also quite easy. Machine did all the work :)

Until then, here is the method I'm now using.

1. Mix sugar into the egg whites and whip over a double boiler set up.
2. Keep hand mixing until whites are 160 degrees F
3. Once it's at 160 degrees, remove from heat and mix in stand mixer Thick, glossy and cool. Can take up to 10 mins.**
4. Add in the whipped butter and mix until smooth. (if the butter is not pre-whipped, you can add it in little chunks at a time. I find with my stand mixer and pre-whipped butter I can drop in the entire thing)
5. Flavour accordingly

**Whipping time depends on the mixing stand you use!! I have a Bosch Universal Plus and it only takes about 3-5 mins to whip up on speed 4! I talked to the ladies at healthykitchens and they said with older Bosch machines you should use speed 3 and it takes about the same amount of time.
My friend uses a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer and it takes her about 10 mins. So please watch while it whips. I've tried whipping it for 10 mins before and nothing really changed too much, maybe a little less fluffy but at least it didn't collapse.

This time I made Strawberry and Lemon butter cream :) both were a hit.
I added a small fondant star for decoration on them just for cute factor

Have fun experimenting!