Doubling down on all things green with these matcha and pistachio shortbread cookie bars. A buttery, melt-in-your-mouth texture and a crunchy granulated sugar topping will have you clamoring for more.
This flavorful twist on a classic butter shortbread is a matcha made in heaven, combining two green ingredients in one brightly colored cookie that has a unique flavor that’s all its own.
So you know those sound illusions where you can trick your brain into hearing a completely different word depending on what you’re focusing on? (Yanny/Laurel is the one example that went viral not too long ago).
Well, this recipe is sort of like that, with a combination of matcha and pistachio (what would you call that… Mastachio? Pistacha?)
Take a bite and think matcha, and you’ll taste bright and grassy matcha.
Think about pistachio and you’ll definitely taste the nuttiness.
Think about nothing specific and you’ll just taste pure deliciousness, sweet and salty and just plain lovely.
This is a more traditional shortbread than my previous shortbread recipes: the most notable difference being the lack of egg here. While the egg adds stability for sure, it’s definitely not a traditional shortbread and results in a texture more like a sugar cookie. This eggless shortbread has a ‘shorter’ texture, short being the moniker used to describe that crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth characteristic that’s so unique to shortbread.
The pistachio flour and its notable lack of gluten helps make the cookie even more tender, although it is more apt to crumble especially if the cookie is overbaked. For that reason these shortbread cookies are probably not great for shipping, they’re just not sturdy enough for such a journey.
In lieu of pistachio flour you can use very finely ground pistachios. I recommend lightly toasting them in a low oven to dry them out a bit, then pulse in a food processor. Just don’t process it too far or you’ll end up with butter instead. Add a bit of flour to help the nuts stay powdery if necessary. You could also use almond flour here too.
(I like the pistachio flour from Nuts.com, but there are plenty of other brands that will work well here too). It’s not cheap, but nothing pistachio based is really. You only need 3/4 cup or about 75g here. Use what’s left to make some pistachio amaretti!
This recipe calls for softened butter, which is softer than room temperature butter.
Be sure to plan ahead and get your butter out of the fridge a good 1-2 hours before you bake. It’s really hard to get evenly softened butter in the microwave (it’ll usually end up soft in some parts and melted in others). The Tartine Cookbook (which I referenced when developing this recipe) recommends melting a portion of the butter on the stove, then mixing the rest of the too-cool butter into that. I haven’t tried this personally but it’s an interesting method.
Because it uses such soft butter, the dough can be easily mixed with a wooden spoon: no mixer necessary! When you go to mix in the salt and sugar, the butter should take on the consistency of thick mayonnaise. If it’s too firm, you’re going to have a really hard time incorporating the ingredients and will likely end up over-mixing your dough.
Since this recipe is a bit higher in fat than many other shortbread cookies, I do not recommend using this recipe for slice-and-bake type cookies – it will not hold its shape in the oven.
While I used an 8-inch square baking pan, this recipe can also be made in a 9-inch tart pan with removable bottom, which will make for lovely fluted edged triangles perfect for dipping in tea.
Shortbread like this one, especially green shortbread, is a bit tricky to determine when it’s done. Overcook it and it might be too crumbly, undercook it and the center may be a bit greasy. Depending on your individual oven, as well as other factors like what baking pan you use (I recommend a light colored finish here), it may take more than one batch to find the sweet spot. Good news is even slightly under or over-done, this shortbread is still delicious.
Shortbread is especially fragile while it’s still warm, however, this is when you want to cut it if you want nice, clean cuts.
I recommend letting the shortbread cool for about 15 minutes before dusting with granulated sugar (if desired). Then, use a thin paring knife or even a sharp-edged bench scraper to make your cuts. Whether you go with fingers, squares, or triangles is totally up to you. (I particularly enjoyed the test batch I cut into small 1-inch squares, although the bite-sized pieces were particularly dangerous as I’d pop one or two in my mouth every time I walked by it seemed.)
If you can stand it, try to let the cut shortbread cool in the pan for about an hour or so before removing the cookies (use the overhanging parchment as handles to ‘lift’ the slab out all in one piece). Once cooled, the shortbread will be sturdy enough to pick up and eat.
Leaving out the matcha here is totally fine if you’re not a fan (hi, Mom!) Without the matcha, the cookies will just be much less green (as much as we associate the color green with pistachios, the nuts themselves are more on the brown side). Conversely… if you really really love matcha, up the matcha to 1 tablespoon for a more intense flavor.
I like adding a bit of pistachio extract to enhance the mild natural pistachio flavor (while lovely, it’s a flavor that can easily be overpowered by stronger flavors like matcha… the extract helps balance that). That said, you can leave this out as well, you’ll just tip the flavor scale more heavily towards the matcha.
These delightfully green matcha and pistachio shortbread cookie bars have a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth texture and a crunchy granulated sugar topping. Cut them into squares, triangles, or fingers.
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