Matcha Crinkle Cookies

I knew right away that matcha will be a favorite after my first bite of my first ever matcha-flavored food.  It was a humble yet glorious lil muffin and its insides were softly tinged green (!!!).  Since then whenever I see 'matcha' on a blog, Pinterest, tumblr and everywhere else, I just go nuts and seconds later, I'll be reading up on that blog post and bookmarking it after.

I even bought freaking soy milk just so I could make iced matcha latte!  Have you ever tried making iced matcha latte?  Without a bamboo whisk? Which I didn't know was called that prior to reading up on homemade matcha lattes.  

Oh well!

Sooo crinkles.  Crinkle cookies.  I usually only see them made with chocolate and turned to red velvet.  And only recently, with peanut butter.  But never, ever with matcha.  

That all changed when I was 'hanging out' on Miss Hangrypants and discovered she has a category devoted only to all (edible)  things matcha.  Of course you'd be fazed by all the wonders that fill that space up, but your friend here prefers to begin with the simple ones (like crinkle cookies) before aiming for Mt. Everest-intimidating ones (like crepes, macarons and brioche!).

Mabel's 'Matcha Crinkle Cookies' recipe is simple and easy to follow.  But like always read through the whole thing first; make sure you have all the ingredients needed before starting!  After the white chocolate is melted and let to cool for a bit, the cookie dough comes together pretty quick.  But!  Thou must practice immense patience! For the dough needs at least 4-hours worth of chill time in the fridge.

I never said the recipe was a quick one!  But after letting it chill in the fridge for one whole day...I had such difficulty scooping and forming the cookie dough into balls.  It was still too soft and sticky!  I hope the following scene won't be too gruesome for your baker heart, but what I was forced to do was:  try my absolute best to scoop even blobs of dough and let it fall off into the powdered sugar + a bit of matcha powder, cover all exposed dough with the matcha sugar and then try to roll the dough into balls between my warm hands.

It was extremely messy.  My grandfather thought I was making bilo-bilo except I wasn't making bilo-bilo!  I was trying to make crinkle cookies!  Trying!  But in the end, I got cookies that do look like crinkle cookies with crackly surfaces covered in matcha sugar and there are other cookies that looked like normal puffy cookies except they were green.

And I already was expecting the worst.  I was expecting that the taste would be off, too.  But thank Miss Hangrypants because these cookies are good!  They are light and not too sweet.  Soft and a little chewy.  You can definitely eat 3 or 4 in under a minute.  Wait.  Is that possible?

Not that I'm scaring you off this recipe but here's what you'll be left to clean up afterwards.  Ahh, food blogging!  Mise en place looks beautiful in pictures but the dishes!  And that part about coating all surfaces of dough with matcha sugar and then the rolling bit?  There's the proof.  I don't know why the cookie dough didn't firm up after letting it chill for one whole day! Maybe I should go ahead and comment on Miss Hangrypants' blog?

But let's look on the brightest side of everything and say that this may not be the case for you.  If you decide to give this matcha crinkle cookies a go and everything went smoothly, my goodness, congratulations!  But if you ended up having to resort to drastic and quite messy dredging and rolling, I know your pain.

Til the next post!