Matcha Sugar Cookies
The perfect cookie for matcha lovers and people new to it. These Matcha Sugar Cookies are beautifully green and sweet to balance out the wonderful earthy matcha notes.
If you follow me at all on Instagram, you’ll know that I am very much a matcha person. It’s how I start my day, usually in the form of a latte. And it’s also one of my favorite things to infuse into desserts. My favorite matcha dessert is always in cookie form. But, if you prefer your matcha in beverage form, this Strawberry Matcha Latte is fantastic.
These cookies are soft, chewy and perfectly balanced between the sweet sugar and earthy matcha undertones.
What is Matcha?
Before we deep dive into the cookie recipe, let’s discuss matcha, especially if it’s your first time hearing about it.
Matcha is a green tea powder made from finely ground green tea leaves. Green tea leaves used for matcha are grown in the shade, and the process of growth and where the leaves are grown on the tea bush impact the quality of it. Matcha quality is often graded as ceremonial, premium, or culinary.
The powder is prepared as a tea by whisking the matcha powder with warm water using a chasen (matcha whisk) in a chawan (matcha bowl). Matcha is traditionally seen used in East Asia, with countries like Japan developing entire ceremonial practices around it.
Key Ingredients and Substitutions
- Nut or Seed Butter: I suggest runny cashew butter, tahini or Trader Joe’s Raw Almond Butter. I use these as they tend to be pale in color, so it won’t impact the color of the matcha cookies and keep them nice and bright green. You can also use vegan butter as well, but do pay attention to the recipe notes for recipe adjustments.
- Aquafaba: To help keep the color from getting muted, I like to use pale ingredients like aquafaba as my egg binder. Aquafaba is the liquid you get from a can of chickpeas. I promise it won’t make your cookies taste like chickpeas.
- Cornstarch: Helps to keep the cookies soft and chewy in the middle.
- White Sugar: For those looking to ensure their cookie is vegan, please use an organic white sugar. If you use a darker sugar like coconut sugar, the cookies will come out more dark in color.
- Matcha: For vibrant and beautifully green matcha, I recommend using a good quality ceremonial grade matcha or a very nice and vibrant green culinary matcha. For ceremonial grade, I’ve had the best success with Ippodo Tea’s Sayaka Matcha. For culinary grade, Matcha Bar.
How to Make Matcha Cookies
In one bowl, cream together your sugar, aquafaba and nut or seed butter. For best results, whip them together using a whisk or hand mixer until nice and smooth. Fold in additional liquid ingredients and set aside.
To a separate bowl add in your dry ingredients. For the matcha, make sure to sift it into the bowl to remove any clumps before giving all the dry ingredients a good mix.
Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until a slightly sticky dough appears. No need to chill, just grab a cookie scoop and roll your dough into balls and place on a lined baking sheet.
With your palm, lightly press down on the dough to flatten slightly. Then place the cookies in the oven to bake. Allow to cool on the baking tray before serving or glazing.
Tips for the Perfect Cookies
- If using nut or seed butter, make sure it is runny! Runny nut butters will yield a chewy crumb, so avoid using nut butter at the very bottom of the jar as they will dry out your cookie.
- Make sure to spoon and measure your flour or weigh it out according to instructions. Fluff your flour with a fork before spooning it into your measuring cup. Avoid sticking your measuring cup into the flour to measure as this will cause you to measure too much flour and lead to a dry cookie.
- Adjust the matcha based on your preference. Start off with 1 teaspoon of ceremonial grade matcha if you aren’t sure about the taste. I find for me, 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons gives me enough matcha taste, but you can add more or less based on your own preference.
Frequently Asked Questions
The grade or quality of the matcha can impact the taste and color of your matcha infused product. For these cookies, I like to use ceremonial grade matcha as it yields the best flavor and color. You can use culinary grade matcha, but note that it will have more bitter undertones to it. And unless you are using a very vibrant green culinary grade matcha, you will likely have a more dull or muted green color to your cookie.
You can! I have tested this recipe using gluten-free oat flour. Grind together 1 1/2 cups of rolled oats into as fine of a flour as you can make it , then follow the instructions as is. Make sure to flatten the cookie before placing in the oven. They will be slightly more cracked on top, but still have a lovely chewy texture.
These cookies are supposed to mimic a sugar cookie. From traditional sugar cookie recipes, I have reduced the amount of sugar to still help make these palatable. You can cut it down to 1/2 cup sugar without consequence to the recipe. If you’d like a sugar cookie recipe with much less sugar, I suggest trying out this recipe for Almond Butter Sugar Cookies.
Matcha powder is loaded with antioxidants as it’s brilliant green hue suggests. These antioxidants help to reduce oxidative damage to our cells, which helps to reduce chronic disease risk. Matcha happens to be highly concentrated in these antioxidants compared to regular green tea. While matcha has caffeine, a component in matcha called L-thianine helps to stabilize energy levels better than coffee and promote less stress.
How to Store
Once cooled and iced to preference, store cookies in an airtight container on the counter for up to 4 days. You can freeze these cookies as well but storing the airtight container in the freezer for up to 3 months. To thaw, just leave your cookie out at room temperature and allow to thaw naturally for 10-15 minutes before consuming.
More Cookie Recipes to Try
- Vegan Snickerdoodle Cookies
- Pumpkin S’mores Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies
- Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies
- Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Matcha Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 9 minutes
- Total Time: 24 minutes
- Yield: 16 cookies 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
The perfect cookie for matcha lovers and people new to it. These Matcha Sugar Cookies are beautifully green and sweet to balance out the wonderful earthy matcha notes.
Ingredients
Wet Ingredients
- 1/2 cup cashew butter or tahini
- 2/3 cup organic white sugar
- 1/4 cup aquafaba
- 2 tbsp unsweetened plant based milk (I used almond milk)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Dry Ingredients
- 1 1/2 to 2 tsp matcha powder, ceremonial grade preferred
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1/4 tsp salt (1/2 tsp if using unsalted tahini)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
Maple Sugar Glaze (optional)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tbsp unsweetened almond milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In one mixing bowl, combine together your sugar, aquafaba and nut or seed butter. For best results, whip them together using a whisk or hand mixer until nice and smooth. Fold in vanilla and milk and set aside.
- To a separate bowl add in your dry ingredients, making sure to sift in the matcha to remove any clumps before giving all the dry ingredients a good mix.
- Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until a slightly sticky dough appears. With a cookie scoop, spoon some dough into clean hands and roll your dough into balls and place on the baking sheet.
- With your palm, lightly press down on the dough to flatten slightly. Then place the cookies in the oven to bake for 9 minutes.
- Allow to cool on the baking tray before serving or glazing. To make the glaze, combine glaze ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth, adding an extra tablespoon of water as needed until the glaze is smooth and drizzly. Spoon or dip your cookie to coat it half way and allow to drip off excess. Place the coated cookie on a parchment lined tray and allow the glaze to set for at least 3 hours to harden.
Notes
If using nut or seed butter, make sure it is runny! Runny nut butters will yield a chewy crumb, so avoid using nut butter at the very bottom of the jar as they will dry out your cookie.
Make sure to spoon and measure your flour or weigh it out according to instructions. Fluff your flour with a fork before spooning it into your measuring cup. Avoid sticking your measuring cup into the flour to measure as this will cause you to measure too much flour and lead to a dry cookie.
Adjust the matcha based on your preference. Start off with 1 teaspoon of ceremonial grade matcha if you aren’t sure about the taste. I find for me, 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons gives me enough matcha taste, but you can add more or less based on your own preference.
If replacing nut butter for vegan butter, make sure to use softened butter and cream it with the sugar using a hand mixer first before adding other wet ingredients. These will spread easier depending on the brand of vegan butter you use. So test one rolled or flattened in the oven before baking the rest of the cookies.
If you tried this recipe or any other recipe on the blog, then let me know what you thought in the comments below! And if you loved it, don’t forget to rate it too. Feel free to follow on Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok for the latest nutrition tips and recipe videos.
★ Catherine
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