Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, from decorations to costumes to tasty treats, so this year I decided I would combine two of my favorite things, Halloween and tea, and scare up some spooky treats.

So without further ado, here are matcha monster cookies, three ways.

Supplies (required)

- Powdered sugar
- Matcha powder. I used traditional, but you could also use one of our other flavors, such as chocolate, blueberry, cinnamon apple, or raspberry.
- Butter
- Flour
- Eggs
- Mixing bowl
- Mixer with a paddle attachment or wooden spoon
- Baking sheets
- Parchment paper

Supplies (optional)

- Frosting (I used buttercream, but you could use royal icing or another flavor)
- Vanilla for frosting (to taste)
- White chocolate
- Decorating bags and tips or Ziploc bags
- Raspberry jam
- Food coloring
- Sprinkles
- Wire rack
- Spatula for transferring cookies

The Basics

The recipe I used for this project was this Matcha Cookie recipe from our TeaChef site. A few things we learned from making the recipe were:

1. Don't overheat the butter. If your dough seems too runny when you're done mixing it, simply chill it for longer until it firms up.

2. Check for flour/matcha pockets. We wound up with a few stray pockets of unincorporated flour/matcha in our dough because we were mixing by hand. If you do find them later, just do your best to mix them back in or remove them.

So, once you have your dough chilled and ready to go, get ready to cut your shapes. For the Creepy Cutouts, we used a variety of shapes, most freeform, some modified from other shapes. For the Crescent Cats and Matcha Monsters, we used circles. Once your cookies are out of the oven, make sure to let them cool completely so your icing doesn't run. Then, it's time to decorate! Here are three ideas that we loved.

Creepy Cutouts

1. Cut your dough into spooky shapes, such as skulls, bones, tombstones, bats, witch hats, ghosts, cats, or cauldrons. Some craft stores will have cookie cutters that come in these shapes, or you can make them yourself out of stiff paper. You can also make freeform shapes by modifying shapes you already have, by using a knife, or just by shaping the dough by hand (be careful of softening the dough by overhandling it. Rechill as necessary).


2. Once the cutouts come out, you can either leave them as is or use frosting, white chocolate, jam, or sprinkles to decorate them. A few variations we tried were using raspberry jam to make thumbprint eyes, coating bones with white chocolate, or using icing to outline teeth and eyes.

Crescent Cats

1. Cut your dough into circles.

2. Heat up some white chocolate. If you're not sure how, here's an article with a few different strategies.

3. Dip your cookies partway into the white chocolate, tilting them until you have a nice crescent shape. When we did this, we had the chocolate in a mug that wasn't quite big enough to turn the cookies, so either opt for a bigger bowl (just not too big or your chocolate won't be deep enough to get the crescent shape) or use a spoon to spread the chocolate. You won't get as smooth of a shape with the latter strategy, but it will taste just as great!

4. Use food coloring to color your frosting black.

5. Using a decorating bag with a small tip or a Ziploc bag with one corner trimmed, pipe a black cat onto your crescent shape. The easiest method I found to make sure the cat fit was to start with the head, then the back and tail, with the body and legs last. You'll also want to let your white chocolate dry first, in case you need to rotate the cookie while you pipe.

Matcha Monsters

1. Cut your dough into circles or custom shapes, depending on your monster.

2. Using whatever colors of icing you would like, pipe your favorite monsters onto the cookies. Ones that work particularly well with matcha green dough are zombies, Frankenstein's monster, vampires, ghouls, or aliens, though as you can see from the picture below, you can use different colors of icing or white chocolate to coat the cookie first or just do matcha green versions of your favorite non-green monsters. We also suggest using things like jam or sprinkles for special effects. Adding ruby-red eyes to your ghost or crystal skull is a great way to add a little extra fright to your night, and because berry flavors mesh so well with matcha, your guests will love it too!

Bonus tips

1. If you know you are going to want to use jam in certain areas of your cookie, consider making an indent with your thumb before baking to make sure the jam doesn't run.

2. Go easy on the white chocolate. Though white chocolate pairs beautifully with matcha, it can also be overpowering because of its sweetness.

3. Use jam for gory details like bloody tooth tips, bone fractures, or wagging tongues.

4. If you're having trouble with the jam, try putting it in the microwave for a few seconds. Warming it up will make it easier to spread.

So, what do you think? Pretty tasty, right? If you make some or have other decorating ideas, please let us know how they turned out on Facebook or Twitter @adagioteas. Or if you have additional recipes you'd like to share for other kinds of tea cookies or spooky Halloween tea treats, share them on TeaChef !