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green tea

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Genmaicha is a traditional Japanese tea made by blending green tea with roasted brown rice. It’s a type of tea characterized by the toasty aroma of roasted grains, typically made by blending relatively inexpensive tea leaves with roasted brown rice and other grains as everyday tea. Its distinctive roasted flavor makes it stand out from other types of Japanese green teas. Because genmaicha uses less tea leaf—about half the amount typically found in green tea blends, due to the addition of grains—it contains less caffeine. This makes it a suitable choice for those who don’t want to take too much caffeine.

Hojicha is a roasted green tea that has been popular as an everyday tea in Japan. Although it’s a green tea, the color of leaves and brewed tea are orange/brown. Hojicha has a distinct sweet and nutty aroma, and it tastes mild and smooth. With less caffeine content than a regular green tea, it’s a wonderful tea to drink any time of the day.

Even though hojicha sweets are not as well known as matcha desserts, we started to see more hojicha infused baked goods lately. Here we made Hojicha Shortbread Cookies (ほうじ茶ショートブレッドクッキー) with just 4-ingredients. The flavor is similar to early grey tea cookies, but the fragrance of roasted green tea comes through, and it tastes really nice. You can make the cookie dough ahead of time and keep it in the freezer if you like. It’s perfect for sharing, or you can bake a dozen now and another dozen later. If you like our Matcha Cookies, you should give this a try!

If you are a beginner for Japanese desserts and not so sure about jumping into sweet red bean paste concoctions, Green Tea Cookies might be the perfect place to start.  Most people are familiar with western-style cookies, and this is certainly in the same family.  It just has less butter and more flour (two different kinds, cake flour and cornstarch).  Because of that, the texture of the cookies is more powdery, and the texture might be a little different from what you are used to.  Also it’s not overly sweet.  Nonetheless, it tastes good (and Japanese)!