♣ Matcha White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Earlier last year, I told myself that if I ever craved desserts, that I would have to make them myself rather than buying them from the store (with the exception of ice cream, though I guess "I don't have an ice cream maker" is maybe not the best excuse...?) 

I figured this rule would be beneficial in two ways:

1. I can control all of the ingredients going in (and sometimes even being able to substitute healthier ingredients in the process.)

2. That there would be times when I was too lazy to go and make something from scratch, and therefore may end up making a better choice instead (ex: that Fuji apple I spied in the fridge earlier.)

For the most part, both have happened, and I sincerely believe that I am better for it. Though... the one unfortunate side effect of making your own desserts is that most of the time there is more than one serving, and sometimes it's hard to stop just after one cookie. :P 

A few weeks ago I had the worst craving for cookies. Not just any cookie, either - I wanted matcha in it. Recently I discovered how to make green tea vanilla lattes at home, after coincidentally trying the drink at Peet's Coffee. Hooked instantly, but unwilling to pay $4.50 per drink, I immediately turned to the internet and found several similar recipes and eventually adapted them to something I like. Anyway, point being is that I have been on a matcha kick for a few weeks now.

After looking at several different recipes online, I settled on the one that had the most similarities to my favorite standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. The one notable change that I did make to this recipe though, was adding 1 tsp of good quality pure vanilla extract. Why? Because it's delicious. (By the way, I recently bought a 32 oz. jug of the stuff on Amazon.com. It'll probably take me like 5 years to work through it, but sometimes I just want to drink that stuff straight.) 

All things good start with sugar and butter.

The matcha batch I'm currently burning through is stuff I bought from nuts.com. Not having tried many different brands, I can't really say if it's the best, but I like the flavor - it is robust and clean.

Next: Ghirardelli white chocolate chips. Not due to any particular preference, I just happened to have them on hand. Though in general I do prefer Ghirardelli chocolate to say, Nestle or Hershey. I used to be able to eat Hershey's chocolate on its own when I was younger, but I think maybe I've grown to like the more higher-grade chocolates as of late?

Since these are all for me, I tend to be a little looser with my cookie dough. Looks like delectable green gobs of frosting. Yumm.

After I had finished setting my cookie dough mounds on the pan, I suddenly thought about my Silpat baking mat, which makes baking cookies a breeze, especially if the dough is particularly sticky.

One of the best features of the Silpat baking mat - the bottoms virtually never get burned!

My cookies didn't come out as green as those in the original recipe, and I wonder if that's a good or bad thing. I stopped wondering for the most part though after I bit into that first fresh, warm cookie right out of the oven.

Awwww yeah. And the white chocolate chips were slightly melted and goopy too. Green tea flavor was strong and did a nice job of offsetting the sweetness of the sugar. All of that wrapped up in delectable butter flavor.

A few days later though...

To my utter horror... I realized that after eating about 3 of these cookies, that I didn't want them anymore. Any other cookies (chocolate chip, sugar, etc.) that I make, I want to eat them all the time until they're gone. But not these. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that my month-long green tea kick would end here so abruptly.

I'm not really sure if it was the matcha + cookie combination, or whether it was fated for my green tea kick to end at this particular time. Or maybe I've just had enough green tea altogether. I'm glad though, that I tried these out before the end.