Wednesday 11 July 2018

Matcha-Chocolate-Vanilla Marbled Cream Cheese Cookies

It's nice to have a relatively relaxed and simple bake after a hectic week last week. Thank God for a smooth photoshoot and school hands-on event last week! Presenting my version of marbled cookies with the flavours: Matcha, chocolate and vanilla!


I adapted the recipe from the cream cheese cookie class that I conducted in June for kids as everyone at the class said it was really yummy. I prepared a large quantity of dough for each flavour here so feel free to scale it down. I discovered a method of creating the marbling effect of two or three different coloured/flavoured cookie dough in only two rounds of re-rolling the dough. The more times you rework the dough by gathering it up and rolling it out again, the tougher the cookie can potentially become. So in order to keep the cookie texture delicate, rework your dough as little as possible. Unfortunately I will be teaching how to marble cookie dough in an upcoming class for Junior chef so I will be unable to share the technique of marbling in two simple steps. Perhaps some of you who are smart enough can figure it out ๐Ÿ˜‰. You may knead the dough over and over to marble it but that's not what I did.

I prepared three portions of the dough below, one for each flavour.

Recipe for Matcha, Chocolate and Vanilla cream cheese cookies 
Ingredients (makes about twenty 5cm cookies for one portion):
100g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
30g cream cheese, softened at room temperature
60g castor sugar
1/4 tsp salt
180g plain flour, sifted*
26g egg, lightly beaten (about half an egg)
1 tsp vanilla extract

* Replace with 170g plain flour and 10g cocoa powder for chocolate dough. Replace with 172g plain flour and 8g bakeable Matcha powder for Matcha dough. The portions of cocoa and matcha powder I suggested is rather mild. Feel free to increase if you prefer stronger flavour.

Steps:
1. Place cream cheese in large mixing bowl and mash it against the sides of the bowl with a spatula until it is softer. Add butter and mix the two together. Add salt and sugar and beat it with spatula or electric mixer until lighter in texture.

2. Gradually add egg and mix well after each addition.

3. Add sifted flour or flour and cocoa/matcha in a few batches and mix well after each addition until a ball of dough forms.

Vanilla, matcha and chocolate dough

4. Divide each coloured dough into 3 or 4 portions. Take one portion from each colour to create a marbled dough between two pieces of parchment paper. Repeat for the other portions. The reason why I divide each colour up is due to the large quantity here so it's easier to work with smaller portions each time. The marbled dough should be rolled to thickness of about 5-6mm.

Marbled dough

5. Chill the dough in the freezer or fridge until firm before cutting out the dough. You may store the dough in the freezer for a few months in airtight condition. Let the dough soften at room temperature a little before stamping or cutting out the shapes.

I used a scalloped square cookie cutter. You may use a knife to cut squares if you wish or any other shapes.

6. Place the cookie cutouts on baking tray lined with parchment paper with about 2cm spacing between cookies. The cookies won't expand much during baking so you can put the cutouts quite close to each other.

7. Bake in preheated oven at 160-170℃ on second lowest rack for 13-15 minutes or until slightly browned at bottom and edges. Note that baking time and temperature may vary as each oven is different. Use the slight browning visual cue as your gauge. Cool completely before storing.

With love,
Phay Shing

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