These are so delicious with homemade chai tea latte. It’s hard to argue that red and green have become unofficial colours of Christmas. And although I don’t decorate my house in that colour scheme, I always associate them with the holiday. So when my daughter became determined to develop the best chocolate and matcha cookies for Vikalinka, I immediately imagined them in my Christmas recipe collection. It’s not to say you can only make them at Christmas time because these chewy chocolate chip cookies, delicately scented with green tea, are an absolute delight. A perfect companion for your cup of coffee and a good book. White chocolate chunks balance out the sharpness of the green tea in such a lovely way. These cookies never become cloyingly sweet no matter how many of them you eat in one sitting!
What is Matcha?
You are probably familiar with Matcha Latte, the brilliantly green milky concoction, young and pretty influencers show off in their Instagram feeds. You might even drink it yourself. Not me! I prefer coffee or black tea. This recipe, however is the brainchild of my child, my 16 year old daughter to be exact. She is the baker in the family and it’s time her creations make it to this website. Why bake with matcha you might wonder. Well, apart from its incredibly vivid and beautiful green colour, it gives your baked goods a distinct but mild green tea flavour. With that not only are you getting a delicious flavour but also antioxidants that come with green tea. If you are not familiar with matcha, you might be confused where to find it and what to buy. Don’t worry it’s relatively easy to find these days, which is by the way is made by blending a special type of green tea into a powder. Matcha powder comes in three grades. Ceremonial, used for making tea, is the highest and most expensive grade. It is also the most vibrant. Then comes the premium grade and finally, the culinary grade. For this recipe, I used premium grade matcha powder as I find the culinary grade to be a bit dull in colour and too sharp and sometimes bitter in taste.
How to Preserve Green Colour
As green as this powder is, it tends to turn brown when it gets baked. Here is what we learned from working with it. Your cookies will look their best/greenest on the day they are baked. The colour will fade a bit the following day. The taste however, will not change. If you chill your cookie dough in the fridge overnight, this will also affect the vibrancy of your cookies. In short, the green colour will be the most brilliant in the beginning of the process. The picture of the cookie dough above shows it right after mixing.
Popular Christmas Cookies to Try
Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies Lemon Ricotta Cookies Honey, Walnut and Cinnamon Rugelach Nutella and Hazelnut Palmiers Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies
