These easy matcha white chocolate cookies are the perfect chewy cookie for matcha lovers with their unique green tea flavour and creamy white chocolate chips.
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✏️ Recipe creation
These chewy matcha cookies have that slightly bitter and unique green tea taste, which I just love pairing with the sweetness of white chocolate. This easy matcha cookie recipe is simple and quick, with only one bowl and 15mins of prep time.
These matcha white chocolate cookies are nicely thick and chewy. They’re based on my cake-like basic cookie recipe (like these white chocolate pecan cookies), with a few tweaks to account for the natural bitterness of matcha green tea.
These matcha cookies are great with a cup of tea or coffee. I also like giving a freshly baked batch of these cookies as gifts to friends and family.
As a green-coloured cookie, they're great for themed parties like St Patrick's Day or Christmas - they make an amazingly unique holiday cookie idea!
If you’ve not had matcha green tea flavoured baked goods before, these matcha white chocolate chip cookies are a great matcha dessert idea to start you off!
🥘 Ingredients
This matcha cookie recipe calls for the following ingredients:
- Butter: use unsalted to control the amount of salt. Room temperature is best for ease of mixing.
- Light brown sugar: use the soft variety best for baking.
- White sugar: finely granulated e.g. caster sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract (optional): use extract or paste over essence for best flavour
- Plain all-purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Salt (optional)
- Matcha powder: use a high-quality ceremonial or culinary grade.
- White chocolate chips
See the recipe card for quantities.
Top tip: For accuracy, it’s best to weigh your ingredients rather than using cups.
♻️ Substitutions / Variations
Swap your white chocolate chips for milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips.
You can swap the plain flour for self-raising flour of the same amount and exclude the baking powder.
Instead of both brown sugar and white sugar, you can replace one with the other so it's either all brown sugar (a more caramel taste) or all white sugar (a purer sweetness).
You can also stir in other extras like macadamia nuts to your cookie batter before baking.
I’m a huge matcha fan, so I like to put a healthy dose into these matcha biscuits. If you’re after a more subtle taste, reduce the matcha powder to ¾ of the amount (7-8g).
📖 Method
- Pre-heat oven: 195°C / 175°C (fan) / Gas Mark 5½ / 390°F
- Cream together the butter and sugars until smooth.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder and matcha, then add the salt and mix together until combined.
- Add in the chocolate chunks, stirring through the dough until just evenly spread throughout.
- Roll the dough into balls slightly larger than a walnut, and spread across baking trays lined with greaseproof paper. Put these into the fridge for 30mins before baking for a thicker cookie.
- Bake the cookie dough balls in the oven for 8-10mins until lightly golden. Allow to cool then enjoy!
💭 Top tips
- Not all matcha powder is created equal! Good quality matcha, such as a ceremonial or culinary-grade matcha powder from a good brand is key. Cheap matcha can be more bitter and a less vibrant green.
- For a smoother cookie batter, sieve your matcha powder as it can be quite lumpy.
- For thick chewy matcha cookies with a gooey centre, it's important to chill your rolled cookie dough balls for at least 15mins before baking. Not a problem if you like your cookies thin and crispy!
- The cookies will spread as they bake so leave a few inches of space between scoops on the tray.
- Allow your green tea cookies to cool on the tray for 10mins or so before moving them to a wire rack. Otherwise, you’ll risk them breaking.
- Make frosted matcha cookies with this easy matcha buttercream. You can even use it to turn them into matcha sandwich cookies!
❔ Recipe FAQs
Matcha is a fine powder made from the same plant as green tea.
It is specially grown and processed from green tea leaves. This is made differently from what you find in your standard green tea bags. There are also different quality grades of matcha powder.
Matcha has an earthy taste similar to actual green tea.
On its own, matcha is usually described as a bit bitter so pairs nicely with sweet flavours such as vanilla.
Yes! When baking with matcha powder, be sure to use food-grade or ceremonial-grade matcha powder. Matcha powder adds a delicious green tea flavour to your baked goods and will add a vibrant green colour too.
Matcha has a slightly bitter natural flavour, which makes it amazing when you have it in a matcha latte with some vanilla syrup (my personal Starbucks favourite). It’s even better used in desserts and sweet treats. The earthy green tea flavour is balanced beautifully by sweet flavours such as white chocolate and vanilla or fruity citrus flavours such as lemon.
As it’s a very strong flavour, you don’t need much of the matcha green tea powder to flavour your baked goods.
Your matcha green tea cookies should last for up to 4 days stored in an airtight container.
Yes! You can freeze your matcha cookies wrapped in a layer of cling film and a layer of foil for up to 2 months.
To make a gluten-free matcha cookies, swap the plain flour for gluten-free flour. I recommend using a gluten-free plain flour blend, such as King Arthur's measure for measure flour or Freee from Doves Farm.
Alternatively, you can swap the plain flour for almond flour and add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch (white fine powder). This is also called cornflour in the UK and other places.
🧁 Other goodies
Looking for some more easy desserts to make?
If you’re obsessed with matcha (like I am!) then check out this collection of best matcha dessert recipes!
Some of my favourite matcha recipes include:
- Black sesame shortbread with a matcha chocolate dip
- Matcha no-bake cheesecake
- Matcha white chocolate cake
- Matcha green tea cupcakes
- Green tea fudge
- Matcha brownies
If you're a fan of Asian fusion desserts, you might also like this easy purple ube cheesecake recipe, ube brownies recipe or this tasty simple ube cake recipe.
For all the cookie lovers, check these Biscoff stuffed cookies and easy strawberry heart melting moments.
Looking forward to some new recipes? Check out my Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest pages for a few sneak peeks and some sweet inspiration!
Or if you’d like to hear about our latest recipes, why not subscribe to our newsletter?
📖 Recipe
Matcha White Chocolate Cookies
Rate this recipe here:
Ingredients
- 125 g (½ cups) unsalted butter room temp.
- 100 g (½ cups) light brown soft sugar
- 135 g (⅔ cups) white sugar finely granulated e.g. caster
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 215 g (1¾ cups) plain all-purpose flour see notes for self-raising flour swap
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- ⅛ teaspoon salt optional
- 10 g (2 teaspoon) matcha (green tea) powder
- 200 g (1¼ cups) white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven: 195°C / 175°C (fan) / Gas Mark 5½ / 390°F
- Cream together the butter and sugars until smooth.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder and matcha, then add the salt and mix together until combined.
- Add in the chocolate chunks, stirring through the dough until just evenly spread throughout.
- Roll the dough into balls slightly larger than a walnut, and spread across baking trays lined with greaseproof paper. Refridgerate for 30mins for a thicker cookie.
- Bake the cookie dough balls in the oven for 8-10mins until lightly golden edges. Allow to cool then enjoy!
Notes
- Swap the plain flour for self-raising flour and exclude the baking powder.
- You can use all white or all brown sugar of the same total amount.
- Use high-quality culinary or ceremonial-grade matcha powder for the best flavour and bright green colour.
- Chill your cookie dough balls before baking for a thick and chewy cookie, or skip this step for a thin and crispy version.
- The cookies will spread as they bake so leave a few inches of space between balls on the tray.
- Let the cookies cool on the tray before moving them so they don't break.
Nutrition
Nutritional information is an estimate based on an online nutritional calculator, actual values may vary.
Nicole says
Brilliant recipe 😊 great to find one that doesn't skimp out on the chocolate chips!
The tips were super helpful as well - we've been on the hunt for that perfect level of cookie-chewyness for ages, but it never turned out quite right with other recipes we tried. Fridging is important!
10/10 Will def be trying some of your other matcha recipes!
Sweet Mouth Joy says
Thanks Nicole! Glad you liked the recipe