The following pictorial for sweet matcha cookies recipe is an inspiration from Phillbury’s double chocolate chip cookies recipe.  Little Grace and I love any dessert with Japanese matcha (green tea) flavor and hope you like this recipe.   I’m hoping by documenting our step-by-step with visual aids will help us make the cookies with a consistent texture but so far.

• Prep time: 20 minutes
• bake time: 10 minutes per dozen
• Servings: 2 large dozens or 3 small dozens

Ingredients:

Part A: (in standing mixer bowl)

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) semi melted-softened unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening
• 2 Tbsp milk
• 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp Maeda-en matcha powder* OR 2 Tbsp Sencha Naturals’ Everyday Matcha powder
• 1 large egg

*Edited 9/4/23: Our first time making these matcha cookies, we used two packages of Ito-En Sweet Matcha Powder. The matcha flavor wasn’t strong enough so I searched and tested several matcha powder and find the Maeda-en Culinary Matcha powder works best but it’s pricey for a can of 4-ounces which is enough for 8 dozen cookies. I tested Sencha Naturals Organic Everyday Matcha powder that comes in a bag of 12 ounces at Costco and it worked nicely.

Part B: 

• 2 cups of All Purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup of Ghirardelli classic white chips

Notes:

• Use the whip attachment on the Kitchen Aide standing mixer to beat the cookie mixture.
• Use pure green tea powder to get a more intense matcha flavor. When using the green tea powder, the natural color will appear a darker green.  The Ito-En Sweetened matcha powder only contains 15% green tea powder.
• I do not recommend to decrease the sugar and butter measurements.  I tried that and did not achieve the chewy soft and buttery taste and we didn’t like the texture either.
• Butter – If the butter is heated and melting hot, then chill the cookie dough in the fridge for at least 20 minutes or else the cookie batter formed into balls will flattened.

Direction:

1.  Heat oven to 375’F.  Gather the ingredients.

2.  Combine Part A ingredients except for the egg into the standing mixer bowl.  That’s the sugar, semi melted-soft butter, shortening, milk, vanilla extract, and matcha powder.  Beat on speed 5 until light and fluffy.

3.  Beat in egg until blended.

4.  Stir flour, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl.  

5.  Gradually pour flour mixture into the creamed matcha mixture on speed 8 until just blended.

6.  Add in the white chips.  Beat on speed 6 for about 15 seconds to mix the white chips into the cookie dough.  Sometimes we would place the white chips on the dough balls at the end before baking. 

7.  Scoop the cookie dough out of the mixing bowl and into a medium bowl. Cover and chill the cookie dough in the fridge for about twenty minutes.  We do this if the butter were completely melted instead of semi soft.  In previous attempts, we used semi softed butter and didn’t chilled the dough to make the crackling textured cookies. But I’m not sure if that’s the reason that created the crackling texture or not. 

8.  Drop by rounded balls (Tablespoon or goftball size) 3 inches apart onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

8.  I tested the baking time and find that baking these cookies at 375 degrees F for 9 to 10 minutes will give you the best soft and chewy cookies with a slight crispness on the edge.

9.  Cool cookies on cooking rack. Enjoy!

Note:  The next day, I wanted to make more green tea cookies but felt guilty using so much sugar and butter.  So we tried using the recipe, but with only 1/4 butter and 3/4 cup of packed BROWN sugar while other ingredients stay the same.  The texture of the cookies were dry and lacks sweetness.  It wasn’t buttery and chewy at all. I’ll stick to the original recipe I had yesterday.

Here’s a flashback when little Grace and I attempted to make green tea cookies for the first time using Mrs. Tran’s recipe which resulted in dry and somewhat bitter matcha cookies.

This was when we had a special guest to demonstrate the step by step directions. The kids’ cookies didn’t have the crackling texture this time. I am not sure why but it still taste the same to me although I prefer the crackling texture for visual presentation. I think they may have not measured out the baking soda enough to create the crackling texture.

Practice makes perfect! I used to use 2 cups of sugar for a batch of 2 dozen cookies, but then cut the sugar back to 1.5 cup and added in half a cup of white chocolate chips. We are all happy cookies eater now.