Matcha Green Ninjabread Men

I heart ninjabread men.

It's so much fun to take what you already know and put a fun twist on it - like cookies. [Storytime!] There was a huge sale on butter today, and as I was carry armfuls of butter back to my cart, an idea popped in my head to make shortbread. Crisp, buttery cookies that pair perfectly with tea on a cold day, and the days are getting cooooold. 

By the time I returned home, the original idea of simple, rectangular shortbread cookies morphed into little green ninja cookies laced with matcha green tea, ginger, and coconut. If you ask my husband, he can promise you that my brain is "special" (aka weird) and that this food idea morphing thing happens all the time. 

Well, I pranced (true story) into my kitchen to whip up an army of green ninja shortbread men, and the results were lightly crisp, buttery cookies with delicate flavors of green tea and ginger.  They taste AH-mazing, and I may or may not share them. After you eat one of these cookies, you might not either. 

Cool idea side note: Since these cookies are nice and green, you can use holiday cookie cutters to make Christmas wreathes or trees.

---

Green Tea Ginger Shortbread Cookies

• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) of unsalted butter at room temperature, cut into pieces
• 3/4 granulated cane sugar
• 3 Tbs. matcha green tea powder
• 3 Tbs. ground ginger
• 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 3 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour

Culinary Dance Steps:

1. In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer (on medium speed) to beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in green tea powder, ginger, salt,
3. Using the low speed on the mixer, add flour one cup at a time, until flour is thoroughly incorporated into the butter mix. The dough will look like green wet sand, and that's a good thing!
4. Press the crumbly dough together firmly to form a ball. Wrap the dough ball with plastic wrap, and let it chill in the fridge for 1 hour. You can make this dough up to 2 days ahead of time and keep it in the fridge until baking time - just bring it out of the fridge an hour before baking to let the dough warm up a little bit.
5. Once you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
6. Roll out the chilled dough between 2 sheets of lightly floured parchment paper (wax paper is okay too) until the dough is a 1/2-inch thick.
7. Using cookie cutters or a pastry cutter wheel (pizza cutter is good too), cut your dough into the shapes you want. If you're using a cutter wheel, I recommend making 1-inch wide by 2-inch long cookie strips.
8. Re-roll any scraps, repeating step 6 and 7, until you run out of dough.
9. Place cookies on baking sheets lines with parchment paper, and let the raw cookies chill in the fridge one more time for 15 minutes. The parchment paper and the quick pre-bake chilling are important because both help to keep the cookies from spreading out too much when they bake.

1. Bake cookies for 18-23 minutes, or until the bottom edges begin to brown. It might be hard to tell with the cookies being green, so keep a close watch!
   
2. Remove baked cookies from the oven and let cool completely. If you start to mess with the cookies before they've cooled, they'll break.
3. MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Eat cookies as a reward for the small wins in life (starting with the how awesome you are for making these cookies in the first place).

This is how the dough should look before you shape it into a ball for chilling.

Be gentle when rolling the dough out into a circle, otherwise it will crumble on you. If the dough starts to crack at the edges while rolling, gently push the edges inward toward the center to reform the circle.

You can add extra flair by decorating these cookies with icing.