White Chocolate Matcha Cookies

White Chocolate Matcha cookies made with matcha powder (Japanese green tea) and white chocolate chips are the ultimate chewy, gooey, and buttery cookies for matcha tea fans, in fact, they can easily turn matcha haters into matcha lovers!

The best thing about the Matcha chocolate chip cookies recipe is that no special equipment is needed and it comes together in 15 minutes!

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• 🌟 Why this is the best recipe
• 💡 What is matcha?
• 📝 Ingredient notes
• 👩‍🍳  How to make this recipe
• ❓Recipe FAQs
• 🇯🇵 More Japanese dessert recipes
• 🍪 More Cookie recipes
• White Chocolate Matcha cookies

🌟 Why this is the best recipe

1. Perfect chewy texture – Hands down, this is the best chewy matcha white chocolate cookies recipe! The secret behind chewy cookies is 1. resting them before baking 2. right proportion of wet and dry ingredients with just enough fat (butter) 3. not to overbake them
2. Irresistible Gooey & Fudge center – The matcha cookies should have a fudge, gooey texture. There is nothing worse than overbaked cookies with crumbly texture! I suggest rather underbake these Matcha chocolate chip cookies than overbake them. Besides over baking, reducing the fat content (butter) or over-mixing the ingredients also results in cake texture as opposed to gooey
3. Delicious white chocolate and matcha flavor – I never compromise on taste! The combination of white chocolate and deep matcha flavor will blow your mind! Try using the best quality ingredients, it will make a huge difference and provide bright green color cookies
4. Quick & easy to make - Last but not least, it is hard to find a more delicious recipe with so minimal effort. Even if you are a beginner in the kitchen, you can comfortably try this Matcha cookie recipe

💡 What is matcha?

Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves. It is extremely popular in Japan and getting more and more well known all around the world in recent years in formats of tea, latte, mochi, cakes, ice cream, and of course the Japanese tiramisu. Matcha offers plenty of health benefits and contains a concentrated amount of antioxidants, it is the best kind of tea to start the day in my opinion.

If you tried matcha green tea before and found it bitter, next time go for higher quality, it should not be bitter at all. The highest quality matcha used for traditional tea ceremonies is having a so-called ceremonial grade. For baking, you do not really need the highest grade matcha but avoid supermarket versions. Instead, search for organic, pure matcha powder ideally from Japan. 

If unsure about the origin and quality, just go for "ceremonial-grade matcha" from Uji (a region in Japan), you can`t go wrong with that. It is obviously way more expensive than normal supermarket tea however absolutely incomparable and also lasts forever since you will only need a small amount. The finest quality matcha gives a beautiful bright green color and wonderful taste to your desserts!

For this matcha white chocolate chip cookies recipe, bought my quality matcha green tea powder in Japan but you can search for matcha tea on Amazon and chose one according to the reviews and your budget.

Matcha is the perfect natural green food coloring for St Patrick´s Day theme desserts. If baking for this event, why not also try these St Patrick's Day Cookies or this Irish Apple Cake? For another Asian recipe this Pandan Cake is a wonderful green dessert you cannot miss!

📝 Ingredient notes

1. Butter: Use always unsalted as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using European-style 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. In this matcha cookie recipe, the butter needs to be at room temperature so soft enough to be able to cream with the rest of the ingredients
2. Sugar: Use a mix of granulated and light brown sugar for the best cookies. texture and flavor
3. Egg: Room temperature as always, 1 egg is enough as we do not want a cake-like texture
4. Flour: Simple All-purpose flour should be fine in this white chocolate matcha cookies recipe. If you want to be a Pro when it comes to deciding what type of flour to use in your baking, please read my flour guide
5. Salt: An essential ingredient in most dessert recipes. Balances flavor and enhances other ingredients
6. Baking soda and Baking powder: Makes to cookie slightly risen, tender and chewy
7. Matcha: Japanese green tea powder, see my notes above. Please avoid cheap supermarket matcha powder that tastes bitter and has no color whatsoever. Culinary grade matcha should taste pleasant, smooth, almost nutty and its color should be very bright green that can beautifully color your green tea cookies
8. Chocolate chips: Make sure you use high-quality white chocolate that has a pleasant taste! In this recipe, I am using Callebaut White Chocolate (callets). This is high-quality chocolate (yet affordable) that contains a higher percentage of cocoa butter than the average supermarket chocolate. Alternatively, use milk or dark chocolate chips. To learn more about white chocolate, read my white chocolate baking guide.

🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post

👩‍🍳  How to make this recipe

1. Step-by-step process of making the cookies

Making this cookie recipe is extremely easy and quick but there are a couple of key steps you have to get right to achieve the right texture

1. With an Electric hand mixer cream together room temperature (!) butter and sugar for a few minutes
2. Mix in the egg, just until combined
3. Sift the dry ingredients; flour, matcha powder, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together. Sifting is necessary to avoid lumps later
4. Fold the flour mixture in with the help of a Rubber spatula just until combined. Make sure you fold it only until the mixture comes together, literally 30 seconds.
5. Finally, fold in white chocolate chips. Leave some chocolate chips to place on top of the cookies at a later stage
6. Line 2 trays with parchment paper and with the help of a Digital scale divide the cookie batter into 10 equal cookies and place them on the parchment paper leaving enough space between them to spread. Do not soften the surface of the ball, in fact, try to keep it as rough as possible for a nice, crackly surface
7. Now comes the chilling time. See details below

💡 Top Tip: Do not use a mixer and do not over-mix the cookie butter. Over mixing ingredients would result in incorporating too much air and gluten into the mixture in which case the soft matcha and white chocolate cookies might become a crumbly, cake-like texture and we do not want that!

2. Why chill the cookie dough

You will have to chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour and the main reason behind it is to avoid over-spread, sad-looking, flat Matcha cookies.

You might come across "no chill cookie dough" on the Internet, I can almost guarantee that the dry vs wet ingredients are unbalanced in any "no chill cookie" meaning when they are baked, they will be dry. The warmer the dough, the easier it will spread in the oven and our aim is to achieve thick, crackly surface, fudge cookies.

Regarding the cookies spreading too much or not enough in the oven, there are a couple of tricks helping you fix these issues, see my tips further below.

💡 Top Tip: If you don’t have an hour to wait, try to chill them 15min in the freezer instead.

3. How to bake

Baking the Matcha cookies into a chewy fudge texture is a super delicate matter!

First of all, never bake any dessert without properly pre-heating your oven first, so start with that. The cookies will be baked at 175 C / 347°F (no fan) so preheat the oven +20C / 68F as the oven temp drops when you open the door. Always use Digital oven thermometer to avoid over-baked crumbly or under-baked cookies.

The recipe will make 10 large bakery-style cookies, I recommend baking 5 at once in a tray.

I bake these cookies in the following way: 10 minutes at 175 C / 347°F (no fan). After 10 minutes cookies should already be somewhat spread and that is when I place even more chocolate chips on top. It is also a perfect moment to slightly shape the cookies and make them perfectly round, see tips further below in the next section. After, I bake them for another 5 minutes at again 175 C / 347°F. Please note, that each oven is different so you might need to adjust the times slightly.

Leave the cookies on the baking pan while they are still hot as they will further set as they cool. Move them to a cooling rack when they are already partly set, like 5 minutes after they are out of the oven, then let them cool on the rack.

The fudgy matcha cookies are best eaten fresh while they are warm and the white chocolate is melted. Hmm... so delicious!

Alternatively, you can store the cookies in an air-tight jar at room temperature for a few days, I recommend that you warm them up in the microwave before serving.

💡 Top Tip: The Matcha White chocolate cookies are ready when the edge looks sot of baked and the middle slightly gooey but not raw. Do not overbake your cookies!

4. How to achieve cracky cookies

First of all, please do not use substitutes or reduce the sugar in this recipe as it might result in a completely different texture. For health reasons, you can of course try to make them with less sugar, or with gluten-free flour, etc. but do not expect the same texture.

For the best crackly surface apply the tray bang trick (that has been around on Instagram for a while, I wish I could credit the person who came up with this brilliant idea):

After 10 minutes of baking time, take the tray out, and bang the whole tray gently to the kitchen counter 3-4x. It encourages crinkle formation on the top of the cookies and also helps if, for some reason, your cookies would not spread.

5. How to get gooey center on the cookies

For gooey White chocolate matcha cookies, first of all, you need a recipe that has the right ratio of ingredients eg. high enough fat content (butter) vs flour, good news is that this cookie recipe perfectly delivers on that!

Secondly, you must measure your ingredients with a digital scale, a little bit too much of this, not enough of that can majorly change this recipe eg. adding a little bit too much flour might ruin the gooey center you strive for.

Thirdly, do not overbake these cookies! In fact, you have to take them out of the oven when they do not look properly baked yet… It is better to underbake these cookies than to overbake them.

💡 Top Tip: You might need to experiment with your own oven in this regard, and you will see whether you need exactly 15 minutes of baking time like in my oven or maybe 1-2 minutes more or less.

6. How to achieve perfectly round cookies

Apply the circular trick:

After the tray banging, grab a large cookie cutter or any round shape thing in your kitchen (slightly larger than the size of the cookies in the oven). Hold the cookie cutter and make circular movements around the almost baked Matcha white chocolate cookies which will slightly tighten the cookies, make them perfectly round shape and the movement also encourages crinkle forming on top.

Incredible easy trick and works like charm! Place more pecans and chocolate chips on top then put the tray back to the oven and repeat the circular movement at the end of the baking time, if necessary.

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