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 :)

Lavender Honey Shortbread Cookies

So I've been wanting to make cookies from Lavender for a while. I remember the horrible lavender Gelato I had in Italy because they over used Lavender but I couldn't help but wonder how would it taste like if I use the right amount of Lavender.

So, I finally made an effort and went to Nora's Natural Food store to pick up some lavender.

I looked through several different recipes and decided to use this one with a bit of adjustment
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/09/honey-lavender-shortbread-cookies-recipe.html
The recipe still needs a little bit of tweeking. I'm actually unsure if the saltiness was due to the lavender or if I added too much salt.

I'll post what I actually ended up doing when I finish tweeking the recipe.

On a whole, the lavender is a unique taste. I would adjust to have slightly less lavender.
If you don't over use lavender, it won't taste like you're eating perfume.  
I will definitely try making these again but after some tweeks.

Recipe with minor tweeks thus far

Ingredients
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking poweder
2 tsp lavender (I liked a little bit less as lavender is very strong)
6 ounces of butter
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup icing sugar

Grind lavender in a spice grinder, add some of the flour to the grinder if you find that it's not grinding well. I grind the lavender until it was fairly fine

Mix the flour, baking powder and lavender together in a medium size bowl

Cream the butter, honey and sugar. Beat until well mixed
Add the dry ingredients and mix until it's combined

Place onto parchment paper and roll it out (I like to use Gordan Ramsey's technique that he does for the beef wellington to make my roll, video 5:50 mark)

Place into fridge and wait for it to firm up.
Cut into 1/5 inch thick disks.

Cook for 15min or until light golden brown in a 350 degree F oven.