Bakery-worthy vegan matcha cookies. These are gooey and moist, whilst crunchy on the outside. Super easy and fail-proof.
Why this recipe works
Wondering why I'm so enthousiastic about this recipe?
- Easy and forgivable recipe, you can’t go wrong really.
- The texture is perfect, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside
- The white chocolate and matcha combo is heavenly!
- You can customise this base recipe to your hearts content. How? Add any spices or flavourings that you think will work well with matcha.
- It is perfect when dipped into my oat milk latte or hot chocolate.
- This recipe is packed with helpful tricks and tips that will help you make the most delicious cookies.
What goes into this recipe
These are the ingredients you will need:
White chocolate: I know it can be tough to get vegan white chocolate in some places, so don't sweat it if you can't find it. You can easily substitute it for vegan milk chocolate. I would avoid dark chocolate, because you'll then have two bitter elements: matcha and dark chocolate.
Vanilla: I used liquid vanilla extract, the most affordable version.
Hazelnuts: They'll need to be roasted. You can easily roast them yourself in a non-stick pan for 4-5 minutes until they turn golden brown.
To make this recipe you will also need the following equipment:
- Baking tray and paper
- Kitchen scales
- Measuring cups and spoons
Recipe Step-by-step Instructions
This is how you make my vegan matcha cookies - it honestly couldn't be any easier.
- Combine chia seeds and water in a small bowl to create a chia egg. In a different bowl, combine melted butter and sugars.
- Add the vanilla and chia egg to your butter mixture. Stir well until sugar has partly dissolved.
- In a different bowl, combine all your dry ingredients - flour, cornflour, baking soda, salt and matcha powder.
- Combine wet and dry mixtures in a bowl. Then fold in chopped nuts and chopped white chocolate. Place in a large bowl, cover with clingfilm and let rest in the fridge for 1 hour.
- Scoop the mixture into 8 equal-sized balls.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes at 180°C/356°F (fan oven) and let cool on your baking tray. Enjoy!
My Top Tips
I really want you to nail this recipe in your first go. Best way to do that? Read these tips below - they will really help you out!
Always melt your vegan butter
Melting your butter ensures the sugars can dissolve into the warm butter. This will create that distinct caramelly flavour and chewy texture. Plus it will help make your dough a little wetter so it will be easier to mix.
Combine white and brown sugar
Each sugar has its own function in this cookie so you need both. White sugar for a crispy outside and the brown sugar for a chewy texture and rich, almost caramelly flavour.
Chill the dough for at least an hour
Refrigerating your dough ensures the flavours settle and combine, whilst gluten in your dough slackens, creating a chewy (but not rubbery) texture.
It is also helps the cookie dough firm up as the butter cools down. It will help prevent your cookies from running and going flat when you bake them. Read more about the importance of chilling dough here.
Don't bake until hard
Make sure to bake until the edges are crisp, but the middle of the cookie is still soft. When I just started baking, I never knew that cookies had to be soft when taken out of the oven. Make sure you keep that in mind. Once they cool down and the butter firms up again, your cookie will become firm.
Vegan Matcha Cookies: FAQs
Store these cookies in a cookie jar or tin, or in an airtight container for up to 5 days. If they get a little dry, pop them into the microwave for 10-20 seconds and they will be lovely, gooey and melty again.
If you want to make the dough in advance or save leftovers it's best to leave the dough unbaked. After you have let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour you can scoop your cookie dough balls onto a small baking tray (or flat plate) and put the tray in the freezer.
Once completely frozen, transfer balls from the tray into an airtight or bag container to further store in the freezer until you’re ready to bake them.
When you bake the frozen cookie add, 3-5 minutes to the baking time and they’ll be as delicious as the day you made the dough. This dough will keep in your freezer for approx. a month.
The dough might not have stiffened up enough in the fridge yet so refrigerate for a bit longer and you should be able to scoop out perfect little balls.
An ice cream scoop is perfect for scooping the cookie dough into even balls. If it remains slack after 1,5 hours, try adding a teaspoon of flour to firm up your dough.
Don’t worry if the cookie dough seems a lot firmer when you take it our of the fridge. This means the fridge has done its job and has hardened the vegan butter which we had melted for the recipe earlier. If it becomes difficult to scoop, simply let it stand at room temp for 5 -10 minutes to soften a bit.
It is likely your dough was not cold enough or contained too much liquid. The good news is that the cookies will still taste great. To prevent them from flattening next time check the dough is firm enough to form a ball before baking and, if not, refrigerate for longer. You could also add a teaspoon of flour.
Possible Ingredient Substitutions
Don’t have all the ingredients in the cupboard or just want to experiment a little? Here are my tips on how to substitute some main ingredients of this fail proof cookies.
- SUGAR – the muscovado sugar creates the caramelly chewy flavour so if you can keep that in but you can easily vary the ratio between the white and brown sugar. I used light brown sugar and white caster sugar but you can use any white sugar or brown sugar. Overall the more white sugar the more crispy the cookie will be, the more brown sugar the more caramelly and chewy it will be.
- BICARB – If you only have baking powder at home no need to worry, you can substitute the baking soda for baking powder, this will result in a slightly lower rise and less crack on the cookie but should not affect the taste.
- CHIA SEEDS – If you don’t have chia seeds you can use flaxseeds to make your egg. Alternatively, you could try an egg replacer (make sure it is thick and not watery as that will create a cakey and not chewy cookie). Make sure to use the same amount (weight) to replace your chia egg.
- ALTERNATIVE FLAVOURS – You can substitute the nuts and chocolate for any dry fillings, for instance if you want a more chocolatey flavour you can add some milk, if you prefer a different type of nut try almonds or pecans.
Any other ingredients you’re missing at the moment? Get in touch via the comments below and I’ll see if I can find a good substitution for you!
If you liked my vegan matcha cookies, you'll also love my double chocolate chip cookies, blueberry oat muffins, banana bread or chocolate shortbread. You can also browse all my vegan desserts here.
Vegan Matcha Cookies
Equipment
- Baking tray and paper
- Mesuring scaled and cups
Ingredients
- ½ tbsp chia seeds
- 35 g white sugar
- 35 g brown muscovado sugar
- 65 g vegan butter I love using Vitalite
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp matcha important - LEVEL tablespoon: not heaped
- 5 g cornflour or cornstarch as it's known in the US
- 75 g plain flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- 25 g hazelnuts roasted
- 25 g white vegan chocolate
Instructions
- Combine 1 ¼ tbsp of boiling water with chia seeds to make a chia egg. Stir very well, then set aside for later. In the meantime, melt the butter in a large mixing bowl and add in the brown and white sugar. Mix the butter and sugar mixture until it thickens slightly and sugar has partly dissolved.
- Add the vanilla and chia egg to the butter mixture and stir.
- In a separate bowl mix together the flour, bicarb, corn starch, salt, and matcha powder.
- Gradually add the flour mixture to your butter mixture and stir with a spatula until just combined. Chop your hazelnuts and white chocolate and fold into the matcha cookie dough.
- Cover your bowl with clingfilm and let the dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour.
- After an hour, scoop the mixture into 8 equal balls and place on a baking tray.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes at 180°C/356°F (fan oven) and let cool on baking tray. If not using a fan oven, bake at 200°C/392°F.
Notes
- Don't forget to MELT your butter!
- Use BOTH white and brown sugar for optimal results.
- Don't be tempted to bake straight away before refrigerating. This is an important part of the recipe so don't skip it.
- Don't think you need to bake the cookies until they're hard. Bake until the edges are crisp, but the middle is still soft. This way you'll get a gooey, rich, moist cookie.
- This recipes makes 8 cookies.
My dough looks like your fifth picture. But when I bake it, it doesn’t look like your 6th picture. Mine came out much darker. How do you get it to look so light in yours? I used 1.5 tbsp of matcha. Maybe it depends on the brand of matcha?
Hi lovely! Ahh, really sorry to hear that your cookies haven't turned out right! Just wondering - did you use 1.5 level tbsp of matcha? When you're measuring the tbsp of matcha I recommend that your matcha is 1.5 levelled (flat) tbsp, not a heaped tbsp. I added this to the recipe notes now, because from my experience darker cookies are most likely the result of using too much matcha. Another reason would be leaving them in the oven for too long. Results should different slightly from brand to brand, but it shouldn't make a huge difference. I hope this helps a little!
These were delicious! I made mine two batches - one with white and one with milk chocolate. They were both great and the texture was fantastic, but the ones with white chocolate definitely worked better - such a nice flavour combination.
P.S. I actually served them with matcha latte haha, it was so delicious!
Thanks for the delicious recipe!
How lovely, Kate! Glad to see the recipe worked so well for you. I definitely recommend making them with white chocolate if you can - it really pairs so well with matcha and is just a naturally amazing flavour combination. Haha, I see you're very into your matcha, sounds delicious!
Hi, can I substitute the vegan butter with oil? Vegan butter is really hard to find where I live 🙁
Hi lovely! Thank you for commenting.
Can you get margarine where you live? Vegan butter and margarine are largely at the same thing. Margarine will work a lot better than oil. The reason for that is that both margarine and vegan butter are solid at room temperature. This will keep your cookie crunchy and solid.
Oil, on the other hand, is liquid at room temperature, which means it won't hold your cookie together the same way. You can still try it out (I would love to know if the oil version works!), but I'm pretty sure the cookies won't turn out as they are meant to.
If you can't get vegan butter or margarine, something that could work better than oil is also coconut oil (which, again, is solid at room temperature). I hope this helps a little! Have a lovely weekend xx
Hi, can this be gluten free as well? What flour mixture should I use to make it gluten free? Thanks!
Hi lovely, I haven't tested this recipe gluten-free yet so can't really give a good recommendation, sorry! If you do test it gluten-free I would love to hear about how it turned out! 🙂 x
OMG thanks for the recipe, they were delicious !! I just have one question, how many grams are your cookies? And how do I make the ball so that they fit the same way as yours. because mine were like a balls
Ahh thank you so much for your positive feedback Pamela, that's lovely!
Hmm, I'm not entirely sure on how much grams there are per cookie, but basically I divide the entire mixture into 8 equal-sized balls. If you want them all to be exactly the same size you can weigh the dough and divide it by 8, then weigh each cookie ball to see make sure they are all the same.
If they're not shaping into cookie form by themselves whilst baking I would recommend taking them out of the oven whilst baking, then banging the baking tray against a counter to flatten the cookies before putting them back into the oven. You'd need to do that within the first 5 minutes of baking before they start to firm up. You can also shape them a little bit 'flatter' before adding them to the oven. Hope this helps! 🙂
When I try out this recipe the next time I will make sure to add the grams measurements per each cookie 🙂
These are just lush! Perfect flavour, crunch, beautiful cracking over the top and such a strong, good flavour combo with white chocolate. I used regular vegan white choc (no chips) and cut it up. Worked like a treat!
Thank you so much Kat, glad to hear these worked so well for you!
This recipe is SO simple and was the perfect fix for my matcha craving! I was a bit apprehensive using a chia egg (I'm used to making flax eggs), but it worked out just fine and bound everything well. These cookies aren't insanely sweet (thank goodness), and I can see myself melting/drizzing some extra white chocolate on top in the future. Will definitely make again!
Thank you so much for your lovely review Nichole, I really appreciate it! Such a good idea to drizzle some white choc on top! x
Hi, can I use coconut oil instead of vegan butter? Thanks
Hi lovely! Yeah I think that shouldn't be a problem - I haven't tried it with this particular recipe, but I'm pretty confident it would work out! x