Lemon and green tea swirl cookies and some news

Hope everyone had a wonderful start of 2011! My first week was somewhat stressy revolving around preparations for a trip to Palermo, Sicily, next week. Not vacations though... but hopefully I will have some spare time to visit the wonders of the city.

On another note, to explore my recent love for photography, I created an account on Flickr. If any of you out there also use it feel free to add me as a contact.

On the side bar of the blog I also updated with a link to the Flickr photostream, and to my Twitter account, which honestly I do not "tweet" so much I mostly read my timeline.

And finally, a recipe of some cookies I did still during Christmas time. These are another take on the well known "black and white" cookies, which are usually with chocolate and vanilla. In this case I used lemon and matcha, the green tea powder which nowadays you can easily find in the "international" section in bigger supermarkets.

I adapted the recipe from a "black and white" swirls recipe, in a cookies book from IKEA (Plätzchen backen). I bought it in 2009, not sure if you can still find it there.

Lemon and Green Tea Swirls

ingredients (around 45 cookies)

250 gr Flour

1 teaspoon of backing powder

125 gr powder sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

a pinch of salt

1 egg

125 gr butter

2 teaspoons of green tea powder (matcha)

1 spoon of milk

2 egg whites

extra flour for handling the dough

In a bowl mix the flour, backing powder, powder sugar and salt. Add the butter in pieces and mix in the dough until it appears like sand. Add the egg and mix the dough to incorporate all the ingredients.

Divide the dough in two similar sized pieces. In one add the lemon zest, and in the other add the matcha powder and the milk. Mix in well until the matcha powder is well spread throughout the dough. Mold both pieces of dough in to squares and placed them in the fridge for at least one hour.

Spread both pieces of dough in similar size squares with around half a centimeter high. Place one of the pieces in the bottom, spread some egg white on the top and place above the second piece of dough, spreading also some egg white on the top. Roll the assembled doughs in a cylinder, tightening it up as you roll. Take again to the fridge for 1 hour, to make it easier to cut. Cut it in slices of around half cm, and bake at 180°C until the edges start to look golden (around 15 minutes).

Enjoy!