Overview

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 20 cookies

A big step beyond your normal boring sugar cookies covered in frosting for holidays, these red velvet matcha cookies are festively colored and delicious. While they're red and green color shouts Christmas, these bi-colored cookies are so good you'll want them all year round.

These two-tone cookies are surprisingly easy to make and as another bonus they're gluten free! With most of their ingredients in common you simply mix the wet ingredients then divide them in half, then do the same with the dry ingredients.

After splitting the wet ingredients you'll add the red food coloring to one while preserving the other as-is for the matcha side of the cookie dough.

With the dry ingredients there are a few more differences between the two doughs beyond the cocoa and matcha. The red food coloring can add a surprising amount of liquid to the mixture so that side of the dough will need some more flour to supplement. I use buckwheat flour here to not only add a bit of fiber but also to help prevent the dough from spreading too much when it bakes.

The wetness of the red velvet dough will vary depending on if you use a gel or liquid food coloring. For your first time or when using a different type of food coloring compared to your previous batch, it's best to add the buckwheat flour slowly, tablespoon by tablespoon while mixing the red velvet dough. Mix in the flour until you get a dough that's workable and doesn't stick to absolutely everything. 

Make the matcha dough first and use this dough's dryness as a gauge for the consistency you should be aiming for with the red-velvet dough.

At the time of writing this recipe, I chose to use homemade buttercream frosting made with coconut milk for the cookies. I think cream cheese frosting might be even better since the cream cheese frosting flavor goes perfectly with both red velvet and matcha. That said, homemade buttercream frosting is an excellent choice and gives a "snowy" cap to the cookies to put you in the holiday mood.

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (113 grams) softened salted butter
• 1/2 a cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
• 1 1/3 cup gluten free all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoon gluten free starch
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons matcha
• 7 tbsp buckwheat flour

 Instructions:

Step 1: 

In a large mixing bowl beat together softened butter with white and brown sugar until smooth

Step 2:

Add egg, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla extract to the sugar butter mixture, mix until fully combined

Step 3:

Divide the mixture into two halves, putting each half into a large mixing bowl

Step 4:

In one of the halves mix in the red food coloring until fully combined, this will be the red velvet half of the dough for the cookies

Step 5:

In a medium bowl, mix gluten-free flour, gluten-free starch, salt, and baking soda

Step 6:

Split this dry mixture in half into two medium sized bowls (one is for the red velvet half, the other is for the matcha half)

Step 7:

In one bowl of dry ingredients add cocoa powder and 6 tablespoons of buckwheat flour (this will be for the red velvet dough) mix until fully combined

Step 8:

In the other bowl of dry ingredients add matcha and 1 tablespoon of buckwheat flour (this is four the matcha dough) mix until fully combined

Step 9:

Sift your dry ingredient mixes into their respective large bowls of wet ingredients. The mixture with cocoa goes into the bowl with the red food coloring. It helps to do this a little bit at a time, mix until they are fully incorporated.

If the red velvet mixture is still too wet (it sticks to everything) add more buckwheat flour one tablespoon at a time until is dry enough to be workable.

Step 10:

Roll each dough into a logs of equal length, press them together, pinch the edges together then roll the combined log gently until it forms into a rounded cylinder.

Step 11:

Wrap the cookie dough log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour

Step 12:

After the dough has refrigerated for long enough, preheat your oven to 350F (175C) and line a baking tray with a silicone baking sheet.

Step 13:

Remove the dough log from the plastic wrap and cut discs from the log about 1/2 inch thick.

Step 14:

Place the cookie dough discs on the silicone mat lined baking sheet with about a 1/2 inch separation between each cookie. Bake for 10 minutes.

Step 15:

Remove from the oven and let cool for about 5 minutes on the pan before removing to a cooling rack.

Step 16 (Optional):

Spread frosting (butter cream or cream cheese frosting both work well) on the ends of each cookie covering about 1/4 of the length of the cookie.

Serve and enjoy!

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