Sablés au thé vért Matcha

It seems like everyone who is into serious pastry baking has some form of Matcha (green tea) bakes in their repertoire, especially those French pastry fanatics. I know of a person who's undergoing
this rather strange evolution where all of a sudden, cupcakes, buttercream frostings, frilly-pretty sugar gum pastes and fondant aren't enough and wants to challenge herself with genoise, joconde, macarons, mille feuilles, other viennoiseries, financiers and all those frou frou French desserts with names that she can't even correctly pronounce! Hint: that person has a blog too!
I  had the most fantastic matcha-chocolate sablés couple weeks ago: store-bought cookies that our friend Wendy had brought for the makan-makan party. I was inspired to bake matcha sablés (and matcha macarons, matcha cakes, matcha everything!) since then.

Sablés au thé vért Matcha or green-tea butter cookies (things always sound more glamorous when French-ified, don't you think?) I adapted the original of Sablés au Citron from Paris Sweets (pages 24-25) and made the matcha version by omitting the lemon zests, vanilla extract then adding a couple tablespoons of matcha powder and a droplet of green food coloring (purely for aesthetics). The hint of green tea is rather subtle and can be increased by adding another tablespoon of matcha powder, if you like.

By the way, do you like the grasshopper-teapot and teacup in the background? I found those in Wuxi, China, eons ago. Dad had wondered what I was going to do with those since they were so tiny plus I wasn't much of a tea drinker back then! Well, a decade and a half later, they are finally out of the box and found their purpose in my blog! Isn't it wonderful how things come around?! 

A memorable (and highly appropriate) quote from the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun"

"Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come" 

Ingredients (makes about 50 cookies):
2 sticks unsalted butter, room-temp
2/3 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons green tea powder
2 large egg yolks, room-temp
2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
1 drop of green food coloring
~ 1/2 cup colored sugar for coating

Method:
1. Cream butter, sifted powdered sugar and green tea powder until mixture is smooth and silky
2. Beat in 1 egg yolk, then add in salt.
3. With mixer on low speed, add in flour, mixing just until it disappears. Be careful to not over-beat and it's better to blend in whatever remaining flour that needs blending with a rubber spatula
4. Turn the dough onto a counter, gather into a ball, divide in half then wrap each piece of dough in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for ~ 30 minutes.
5. Working on smooth surface, form each piece of dough into a log ~ 1 - 1 1/4 inches thick. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap then chill for another 2 hours.
6. Position oven racks to divide the oven into thirds, then preheat oven to 350˚F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper
7. While the oven is preheating, work on the sugar coating. Whisk the remaining egg yolk in a small bowl until it is smooth and liquid enough to use as glaze. Spread the sugar on a piece of wax paper.
8. Remove the logs of dough from the fridge, brush them lightly with a little egg yolk, roll the logs in the sugar, pressing the sugar gently to get it to stick. Using a sharp slender knife, slice each log into cookies about 1/4 inch thick.
9. Place cookies on the lined baking sheets, with 1/2 inch spacing between them
10. Bake the cookies for ~ 12 minutes or until they are set but not browned. Transfer to cooling racks to cool. Cookies will keep for about 5 days at room temperature in air-tight containers.