Matcha Langues de Chat Cats Recipe

I originally created the vegan version of my matcha langues de chat biscuits in 2018, and decided to make them with traditional non-vegan ingredients. And it 100% works just as well.

For this updated matcha langues de chat recipe, I also use royal icing rather than water icing to pipe on the little cat faces. Both types of icing taste great, but royal icing dries down much harder, making these little langues de chat cats easier to pack in boxes without the details smearing.

You can also see how I made these in my YouTube video:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes about 40 matcha langues de chat biscuits).

Ingredients for Biscuits:

100g unsalted butter, softened
100g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
90g plain flour
10g matcha
3 egg whites

Ingredients for Royal Icing:

1 egg white
115g icing sugar
1 tsp water (optional)
Pink gel food colouring

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a few baking trays with nonstick baking parchment.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add the salt, and sift in the flour and matcha, stirring until you have a thick paste.

3. Add the egg whites and stir until smooth. Scoop the batter into a piping bag fitted with a wide round nozzle (or just a piping bag with a little of the end cut off, but using a nozzle is neater), and pipe thin, short strips onto your lined baking trays – leave about 3cm of space between each strip of batter so they can spread out and not stick to each other.

4. Bake for 8–12 minutes, or until just starting to go brown around the edges but not in the middle, and cool completely on a wire rack.

5. To make the royal icing, whisk the egg white until white and fluffy. Stir in the icing sugar. If it's still a little too thick to pipe, add 1tsp water and stir. Pop in a piping bag fitted with a small biscuit icing nozzle, or just the very tip of the bag cut off (again, the nozzle makes things much neater and easier). Pipe cat faces onto the cooled biscuits, and leave to dry for about an hour.

Enjoy, and have fun.