Recipe: Traditional Kyoto "Tea" Cookies
Pantry Item: Buckwheat Flour
Improvisation: Loose leaf Tea
First posts are a big freaking deal.
They are an introduction, a hand shake, a drum roll, and a proverbial book jacket for all the entries yet to come. They come out of nowhere, popping up like little internet surprise parties, promising cake and hilarity and good times to be remembered for years over. (I can at least promise cake!) Were I at all good at writing such things, I would be able to effortlessly navigate that fine line between charming sarcasm and sassy nonchalance. I would be James Dean lounging against a motorcycle with a cigaret in one hand and gourmet cupcakes in the other. I would be that cool.
But anybody who knows me knows that's not me at all. Were this a Jane Austen novel, I would formally state my intentions to woo you with pictures of beautiful pastries in hopes of winning your most ardent affection. I would court you with nerdy puns and jokes I learned in the 3ed grade. Heck, I would probably call your mother on her birthday if I thought it would successfully assure a good first impressions.
No pressure though…
For me, first posts can elicit any number of feeling. Some uncomfortable, most hopeful, it inevitably bubbles up into a potent cocktail of excitement and anxiety usually reserved for public speaking and blind dates. It reminds me of the first day of school, heart pounding, introducing yourself to a group of strangers at lunch and hoping theres no food stuck in your teeth…Yep, first posts are a lot like that.
And, Interestingly enough, first posts are a lot like new apartment too. This metaphor happens to work very nicely for me, seeing as I have just moved into one. (Look at that!) Hailing from Southern California, where all the stucco track homes are uniformly plastered the same bland shade of beige, I was Thrilled to find my historic one-bedroom in central Virginia! It is unlike any place I have yet to habituate.
Despite being Eighty something years old, everything about this place is new and interesting. (Right now, everything is so new that the Interesting parts haven't had time to drive me crazy yet) Plus, It's easy to love an apartment when it's still relatively empty: it's easy to clean, easy to explore. Most unexpected was how the space has birthed an abundance of creative inspiration. The bookshelves are not as empty as they appear at first glance. Nope. They are crammed full of ideas, each possibility claiming space and marking territory, proclaiming what they one day hope to be. That space is very much alive. I open closets and ideas escape like helium balloons. They bounce around the ceilings and gather into corners, and I don't know if i'll ever get them down.
I love hanging out in the afternoons when sunlight works its way in through the south facing windows. I'll sit cross legged in my orphan arm chair, look around and actively appreciate all the quirks I know I will stop noticing in a few weeks: the paint scuffs above my bedroom door, the patchwork tile on my non functional fireplace, and the Whooshing sound of igniting gasoline that scares me shitless every time I turn the Oven on (Im just waiting for the day it explodes and happily escapes into our atmosphere.) There are two laundromats across the street from me, so the mornings always smell like clean cotton and dryer sheets. I don't think i'll ever stop noticing that…
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I'm renaming it "The little oven that Could"
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It's not home yet, but it's getting there. Apartment and I are taking our time, getting to know each other, and are slowly being accepted into each others space. I told Apartment it had to make room for my healthy library of cook books. Apartment told me I wasn't allowed to turn off the AC unit, and made me wait a whole day before it came back on again. I think it's starting to warm up to me though. I heavily mopped the hardwood floors, and hunted out all the cobwebs behind the radiators, and it's rewarding me with steadily increasing water pressure. It's alright, true love takes time.
The only issue I have is in the kitchen. The third time I tried to take pictures of dinners for future posts, I realized what an incredibly dark corner it's nestled into. All my food looks brown and congealing!! Every angle produces unflattering shadows; even moving platters under the windowsill doesn't help. If I want to photograph in that kitchen, I'll have to channel James Bond and suspend from the ceiling in order to get a good shot. It was the futile nature of that last shoot that lead me to decide on this first recipe I want to share with you.
For weeks, I'd fraught over which recipe to post first. I wanted something flashy and dramatic, impressive and colorful to photograph. Hah! These cookies are anything but! Still, this is me throwing my hands in the air and giving in to an unfussy first post. A gentle, unassuming introduction to my culinary tastes if you will. In posts to come, you'll notice my obsession with all things flowery, rustic, or improvised. These cookies are simultaneously very traditional with a splash of "Winging it!" Buckwheat flour is such a great pantry staple to keep on hand. Its what makes these cookies deliciously nutty, mildly sweet and chewy. this recipe is fast, elegantly simple, and embarrassingly easy to make, but I think that's why I love them so darn much. They can be as plain or fancy as you wish.
I first tasted buckwheat snaps like these in the Nara prefecture of Japan during a family vacation we took when I was 14. It's amazing how memories come back to you after years of being in suspended animation! I decided midway through altering a recipe that I wanted something fancier that just a plain cookie, so I threw a heap of my favorite loose leaf tea in with the sugar, and WOW, these are so perfect for breakfast….or dinner. (I don't judge) Have fun playing around with different teas: Black, oolong, Matcha, Rose or Lavender would all be lovely in this recipe!
Oh! And welcome to my Kitchen :)
BUCKWHEAT TEA COOKIES
Makes: 15 medium cookies (best eaten the day of with tea or coffee)
Time: 10 min. Prep time, 10 min. Bake, 20ish min. to cool
Dry:
1/4 cup + 2 Tbs (50g) Buckwheat flour
1/4 cup + 2 Tbs (50g) Pastry flour (you could probably sub AP Flour)
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
Wet:
1/4 cup +1Tbs +2 tsp (80g) Sugar
1 Tbs loose leaf tea - I used a lavender lemon verbena mix which was AWESOME
1 large egg
1 tsp oil
Process:
Preheat oven to 375F. - In most older gas ovens i've used, this means setting the temperature to just over 350F as they tend to run hot. I highly recommend getting a thermometer to check your ovens accuracy.
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
Scale the sugar and loose tea into a small food processor or coffee grinder and grind for 45 seconds to 1 minute until the tea is powdery fine and aromatic. If you don't get a good whiff of yummy tea smell, put in another tsp and grind. You can always rip open tea bags too if you don't have any loose leaf on hand.
In another small bowl, whisk the Tea Sugar into the egg and oil until slightly frothy.
Add in all the dry ingredients and fold until Just combined. The batter will seem very thick, but spreadable. Transfer the batter into a sandwich baggie or pastry bag, and pipe onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing 2" apart. I piped mine into flower shapes using 5 Quarter sized dots leaving the centers empty. They will spread together in the oven. Alternatively, you can make drop cookies with 2 tsp of batter.
Bake on center rack for 9 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. They might look underdone, but will be slightly springy at 9 minutes and firm as they cool.
*These crazy cookies go through a series of textures. They are delicately soft fresh out of the oven, and cool to be slightly dry and unpleasant for the first 20 minutes. Then around 27 minutes they change their minds and suddenly develop this gingersnap like texture that is sweet and chewy and perfect for dipping in coffee. Have fun!
