The most wonderful season for baking is here!

Wanna make your home smell like Christmas? There is no better time than the heart of December to start baking! Besides, it’s not only Santa who loves freshly-baked cookies! Who doesn’t want to enjoy a cup of hot cocoa in one hand and a yummy homemade cookie in another? This time we at Gals and the City go a little further than traditional recipes and suggest two super yummy matcha Christmas recipes to try and enjoy while chilling around the Christmas tree! Buttery and melt-in-your-mouth soft, these cookies are naturally green without any food coloring which makes them not just healthy and tasty but also very pretty for you to gift your friends and family or just decorate your living room. Go ahead, fire up your oven and make the holiday countdown sweeter by making super cute treats … and don’t miss to tell us which one you love most! Ps: For more Christmas recommendations, you may also check here for the 15 must-try festive cocktails to make at home this year!

SHORTBREAD CHRISTMAS TREE COOKIES

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup butter (softened to room temperature and cut into small pieces)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons high-quality organic matcha powder
• 1/2 cup sugar (we recommend natural sweeteners like stevia, xylitol, or something similar)

Instructions:

First, we will make the dough! Take a stand mixer and beat matcha powder, sugar, and butter until the mixture gets fluffy. Then start adding half of the flour to the mixture and mix on a low speed. Now add the remaining flour and keep mixing until it is well-blended. How to figure it out? Your mixture should look crumbly, but if you squeeze it between your fingers, it will come together. It’s ready, so gather the dough into a ball. The next step is to place dough between two pieces of parchment paper, otherwise, the dough is too sticky and soft to roll out. Start rolling dough with a rolling pin until you make it 1/4 inch thick. Now begins the most interesting and creative part: To cut your cookie shapes, you may use four cookie cutters of the same shape but graduated sizes (large, medium, small and extra small). It is recommended to cut three of the biggest, one medium, two small, and one tiny one for each of your trees. Just keep in mind star and flower shapes work better! For the decoration? Sprinkle your cookies with nonpareils and dragees and bake them. Don’t miss to preheat the oven to 325°F and bake pieces of the same size together until they slightly puff up and the edges start to turn a light brown. Bake the largest cookies for 11 minutes and the smallest ones for 6 minutes. When cookies have cooled, add a small dollop of frosting to the bottom, stack the cookies building your tree, but don’t align them to look like a tree! If desired, you may also create chocolate shortbread cookies for the tree bottoms. Just cut to small squares before baking, and attach to tree bottoms with frosting. For a snowy effect, sprinkle with some powdered sugar before serving (recipe from “kirbiecravings.com”).

KETO MATCHA COOKIES

• 2 ¼ cups of almond flour
• 4 scoops of matcha powder
• 2 tablespoons of natural sweetener like stevia, xylitol, or something similar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 3 ounces of unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 large egg

Instructions:

Put the matcha powder, almond flour, stevia, and salt in a mixing ball and mix well. Then it’s time for the butter! Rub it well into your mixture and add the egg and vanilla. Mix well until you create a green sticky dough. Now put the dough between two sheets of parchment paper, roll until you make it 5mm/0.2in thick, and place your already thin dough in the fridge for 1 hour to firm up. Remember to preheat the oven to 160C/320F and prepare a cookie sheet using a part of the parchment paper again. Ok, now remove the dough from the fridge, cut with a heart-shaped cookie cutter (or your desired shape-cutter), and use an icing spatula to gently remove the cookies to your cookie sheet. Regarding the offcuts, re-roll them and chill for 30 minutes before cutting. Finally, bake your cookies for 15-20 minutes, remove them from the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet, otherwise, they will break very easily (recipe from “myketokitchen.com”).

 [Cover Photo © Yulian Karadzhov/Unsplash]