I made little turtle sablé cookies inspired again by linuxhacker.ru!

To make the dough, I used my adapted recipe found here, but only the vanilla portion of the recipe.

First, I split the dough into three parts: (A) 1/3 to make the turtles’ head and limbs, (B) 1/3 for the inner part of the body, and (C) 1/3 for the green shell. I colored the 1/3 reserved for the shell with 2 drops of green gel coloring and flavored it with 1 Tbsp of matcha (green tea powder).

To make the turtle bodies, I rolled out (B) vanilla dough into a long cord measuring roughly 12 inches. Then, I rolled out (C) the matcha dough until it was flat, but measured 12 inches long and ensured it was wide enough to wrap around (B) the vanilla cord.

Next, I dabbed a tiny amount of water with my fingers onto (B) the vanilla cord and firmly wrapped (C) the matcha around it, squeezing gently to seal the doughs together. To ensure that the dough kept its cylindrical shape, I inserted it inside a paper towel roll with a slit lengthwise that I had previously cut. Finally, I let the dough rest inside the freezer still encased in the paper towel roll for at least 3 hours.

With (A) the remaining vanilla dough, I divided it into two parts. One part would be to made the heads. The other part would be to make the fins and tail. At this part, I roughly estimated that my dough would yield about 40 baby turtles, and set off to make 40 small balls of dough out of the dough reserved for turtle heads. Once I was done with the heads, I put aside 1/8 of the dough reserved for the fins and tails. This 1/8 would be used to make 40 tails. The remaining 7/8 would be turned into 160 tiny balls that would become the turtles’ fins.

After 3 hours of rest, I took out the “body” dough from the freezer and cut the dough into quarter inch slices, rotating the dough between slices to minimize warping the cylindrical shape. If the dough yields more than 40 slices, then I would just make the leftovers as “non-turtles.”

I assembled the body slices onto a sheet of parchment-lined cookie tray and attached the head, limbs, and tails with a tiny bit of water from my fingers to help adhere the doughs better.

Using small chocolate sprinkles, I inserted two on each side of the heads to make “eyes.” I baked the turtle cookies at 350°F for about 7 minutes or just until the edges of the fins started to brown. After the cookies are cooled to room temperature, I melted some chocolate and filled a small piping bag I made out of parchment paper. I cut a very small tip off the piping bag so that I can pipe precise lines on the turtles’ bodies. The lines weren’t always clean, but it did the job!

Finally, after hours of hard work, the turtle cookies are complete!!