Ahh~ 'tis a beautiful day, and I'm feelin' good~ I got my work done in the morning, hit the gym, showered there along with all my friendly neighborhood ajummas, made myself a quick lunch, and now I'm hoping to bang out a St. Patty's Day blog post before the day is up. Clearly I'm not Irish, but I had plenty of Irish friends growing up (and even an Irish pen-pal!), so this one's for them... and all the rest of us who like to pretend we're Irish for a day, teehee. Notice how I totally skipped over White Day, but am all over green St. Patty's day? :) I got my priorities straight.
So that said, Happy St. Patty's Day! I present to you, Green Tea Pinwheel cookies! I know the whole green tea thing is more Asian than Irish, but hey, it's still green! And it's better than say, unnatural food coloring~~ :)
The recipe is actually adapted from a cookbook entitled 쿠키와 비스킷 ( 'Cookies & Biscuits'). It's originally a Japanese book, but has been translated into Korean. I bought it a while back and my mom and I have slowly been making our way through the recipes. The majority of the recipes are vegan (a few include eggs), and they're all very health-oriented. Wholesome, less sugar, lower fat, real natural ingredients, etc. Anyway, I followed the recipe for the most part, but made a few modifications in measurements.
{ Plain dough }
1 cup cookie/cake flour
2 Tbs sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 Tbs canola oil
2 Tbs water
{ Green Tea dough }
1 cup minus 1 Tbs cookie/cake flour
1Tbs green tea powder
2 Tbs sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 Tbs canola oil
2 Tbs water
1. For both of the doughs, sift and mix the dry ingredients together.
2. Add the canola oil and rub with your hands until you get coarse, sandy crumbs.
3. Slowly mix in the water, a little bit at a time, until you get a ball of dough.
4. First roll the plain cookie dough into a rectangle, about 5mm thin. Do the same with the green tea dough.
5. Carefully, place the rolled out green tea dough on top of the plain cookie dough. Gently press down.
6. Next, start rolling the dough, lengthwise. Make sure you roll it pretty tightly, without any gaps or air holes. Wrap the log in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
7. When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 170C.
8. Take the log of dough from fridge and gently cut uniform slices. Place onto cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. They won't spread much.
9. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until slightly golden brown.
Before baking
After baking. Don't they look fun? They remind me of something you would see in 'Alice in Wonderland.'
The texture is also quite firm, similar to shortbread or sugar cookies. These are only slightly sweet and have a mild green tea flavor. Even though they look groovy and funky, in terms of taste, they're more mature and understated- definitely not the typical indulgent cookie that one might be used to (they're not PMS cookies). However, they're fun to make and I reckon they make for healthier snacks when you've got the mid afternoon munchies. :)
So there you have it. A little fusion of Irish & Asian.
Oh, and Kia forwarded this recent Korea Joongang Daily news article to me, about how Korea's recent 'foot and mouth' disease outbreak is prompting more and more Koreans to go veg! Check it out for yerselves~ Ah, I'm looking forward to the day vegetarianism goes mainstream in Korea... There's hope.