My Mom is a baking machine! When I was a little kid, weekends were filled with making pies to freeze for winter, baking chocolate chip cookies to take to school, or creating special treats that were packed in lunches. It’s no wonder I have a sweet tooth.

A while back my sweet tooth was calling out, and I decided to try and combine my love for both tea and sugar cookies. I mean really, what is better than tea in your cookies? Especially when it’s rich earthy Matcha tea.

Matcha is the result of grinding up fine quality green tea leafs into a soft powder and is traditionally part of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Today you can buy Matcha from a variety of different places and below is the collection of different Matcha that I’ve acquired over the last few years.

To make my yummy Matcha Green Tea Sugar Cookies, I started with my Mom’s recipe for Sugar Cookies and have made a few tweaks along the way.

The ingredients include the following:

• 1 Cup Butter (softened, room temperature)
• 1½ Cups Sugar (one cup for the cookie dough and a 1/2 cup for “sprinkles”)
• 2 Eggs
• 3 Cups All-Purpose Flour, minus 3 Tablespoons
• 3 Tablespoons Matcha Green Tea
• ½ Teaspoon Salt
• 1½ Teaspoons Vanilla

So the trick to incorporating the Matcha Green Tea is to measure out your three cups of flour into a sifter and then scoop out three tablespoons of flour, which you then replace with three table spoons of Matcha. I’ve tried the recipe with several different quantities of Matcha and I find that 3 Tablespoons is the perfect amount.

Just like with anything though, feel free to experiment and tweak to your own liking. In order to get all of the dry ingredients well incorporated, I like to sift everything together because it really helps to evenly distribute the wonderful green Matcha!

I’ve had the most success with using Townshed’s Tea Company Matcha. For whatever reason, it seems to add the most flavor and vibrancy to the cookies.

So an important item to note is that you must follow the correct order of events to get the cookies to turn out light and airy. In the excitement of taking pictures, I got carried away and just started adding ingredients until it made for a nice photo. Silly me!?

You must first cream the butter…then add the sugar…then add ONE egg at time. And last but not least, add the vanilla.

Remember, “do what I say, and not what I do” … do not put all of these ingredients in the bowl at once!

Once the wet ingredients have been mixed, slowly add the dry ingredients. I usually put in about a third of the dry ingredients at a time and mix them in before adding more.

Your cookie dough will quickly morph from yellow, to light green, to lime green!

One of the really important steps to this recipe is setting up the cookie dough and letting it rest in the refrigerator. I like to split the dough in half and use Saran wrap to create “green logs.”

Put both cookie dough logs in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

Once they’ve had a chance to set, pull them out and unwrap. Put the remaining half cup of sugar in a bowl to use as the sugar coating on the outside edge of the cookies.

The nice part about the log shape is you avoid rolling out cookie dough and making a big mess. All you have to do is slice off ¼ inch rounds of dough and you’re pretty much set.

I then roll the outside edge of the cookie dough in a bowl of sugar to fancy them up! Be sure to spray a bit of Pam on your cookie sheet to avoid sticking.

After you fill up a baking sheet, it’s time to pop them in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees.

The cookies are quick to bake, and it’s important to keep your eyes on the first batch or two because it’s very easy for them to get burnt on the bottom. With our gas oven I like to bake them for about 9 minutes and then let them rest outside of the oven for another 1-2 minutes before taking them off the baking sheet.

Don’t you just love the color green? I feel like you could really fancy these up with Christmas frosting ideas. You could roll out the cookie dough and use a Holly shaped cookie cutter with red frosting, and I’m sure Santa would be impressed! He’d also love the extra little caffeine kick from these cookies!

This time of year my favorite way to enjoy Matcha Green Tea Sugar Cookies is by the fire with a cup of English Breakfast Tea and my sidekick.

Whiskey is looking at me like, “Are you really trying to take my spot in front of the fire place? really?”

Hope you find a chance to indulge in these Matcha Green Tea Sugar Cookies!