“Wicked” Movie Themed Sugar Cookies (Strawberry Matcha)
Celebrate Oz’s favorite team with these strawberry matcha “Wicked” cookies! Matcha green for Elphaba and Strawberry pink for Glinda come together in these swirled sugar cookies, perfect for movie nights, birthday parties, or theater snacks. Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links.
If you hate food blogs with personal stories, stop now. Because here we go!
It’s 2004, and I’m sitting in my 8th grade English class with my best friend, Jillian, who has just returned from a trip to New York with a CD and a playbill in hand. Somehow in the middle of our English lesson, she manages to take me word by word, lyric by lyric, through this magical new Broadway musical called Wicked. I was hooked! I hadn’t even seen the real thing yet!
20 years later, I felt that same excitement watching the new Wicked movie. Although I never became a musical theater kid, I did become a successful food blogger, so these cookies are my ode to Wicked and my middle school theater friends. They’re really just a simple sugar cookie swirled with matcha and strawberry, based off the matcha strawberry neapolitan cookies that I make frequently. The design is inspired by the movie posters showing Elphaba and Glinda reaching their fingertips towards each other. While the green and pink swirl is cute enough on its own, you can also dip each side of the cookie in sanding sugar for some extra Ozian sparkle.
Sugar Cookie Tips and Tricks
Ingredient Substitutions and Measuring
I always get asked, but yes, you can substitute salted butter for unsalted butter if you omit the addition of extra salt elsewhere in the recipe.
For the matcha, I recommend a very strong and bright blend so you get the best green color. I always use Maeda-en Universal or Ceremonial matcha for my baking. You can read more about how to choose matcha for baking in my Ultimate Guide to Matcha post.
To get the pink color, I use a combination of freeze dried strawberries blended into a powder and pink food coloring, as I find the strawberries alone aren’t strong enough. Alternatively for both the matcha and the strawberry, you can use only food coloring instead. You won’t get the fun flavor contrast, but you can still get a delicious sugar cookie. I would add a tsp of vanilla extract in that case.
Yes, you can substitute one whole egg for the two egg yolks, but I really like the texture and flavor with yolks only.
I highly recommend acquiring a digital kitchen scale if you don’t have one already and measuring your flour by weight. This will ensure your cookies don’t come out too dry or too soft since measuring by volume leads to so much variation. I’ve measured one cup of flour to be about 120g in weight, but there have been times that I’ve scooped a cup of flour that weighed as much as 145g! If you’re going to use volume, make sure you use the fluffy, scoop, and level method: fluff up the flour, scoop, and level off the top.
How to Make Swirled Cookies
First, make your basic sugar cookie dough. Please make sure you are properly creaming your butter and sugar! You need some sort of electric mixer or beater, and your butter should like light and fluffy like buttercream by the time you are done.
After your plain dough comes together, you’ll split the batch in half. One half gets mixed with matcha, and the other half gets mixed with strawberry powder and food dye. Then, you’ll split each half into 10 portions, so you’ll have 20 pieces of dough total (10 pink and 10 green).
Take one green piece and one pink piece. Squish them together. Roll into a ball. Et voila! That’s your swirled sugar cookie! Isn’t that easy?
Sanding Sugar Sprinkles
If you’re looking to add a little extra sparkle, you can roll the cookie balls into regular granulated sugar before baking.
If you want even MORE pizzazz, you can dip the pink side into white or pink sanding sugar and the green side into green or black sanding sugar. I actually used a gold, black, and white sprinkle mix from Williams Sonoma because I thought it was very Elphaba-ish.
But honestly, the cookies look great even without any sprinkles at all!
More Cookie Recipes
Stay tuned, because I definitely have more Wicked/Wizard of Oz themed cookies I plan on publishing before Part Two comes out in Theaters this fall! But for now, check these out:
“Wicked” Cookies (Strawberry Matcha Sugar Cookies)
Ingredients
- 1 stick room temperature unsalted butter, 114g
- 3/4 cup sugar, 150g
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 1/4 cup flour, 150g
- 1/3 cup freeze dried strawberries, blended into powder, 6g
- 1 drop pink food coloring, optional
- 3/4 tsp matcha for baking
- sanding sugar or granulated sugar for dusting, optional
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer or with an electric hand mixer, cream room temperature butter with sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until smooth, light in color, and fluffy in texture.
- Add egg yolks and beat until homogenous.
- Add flour and mix until a dough forms.
- Split dough in half and return one half to the mixing bowl. Add freeze dried strawberry powder and food coloring, if using, and mix until dough is evenly pink.
- Remove pink dough from stand mixer and set aside. Place remaining half of dough into the mixing bowl.
- Add matcha powder and mix until dough is evenly green.
- Divide pink and green cookie doughs into 10 smaller balls each.
- Take one pink and one green cookie dough ball and squish them together. Roll it into a ball.
- Dip cookie dough ball into granulated sugar or sprinkles (sanding sugar). If using two different color sanding sugars, dip the pink side into pink or white sprinkles and the green side into black sprinkles.
- Repeat with the remaining cookie dough until you have 10 cookie dough balls.
- Place cookies on a lined baking sheet about two inches apart. Chill in the fridge while you preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- When oven is ready, bake for 12 minutes or until cookies easily lift off the tray. Leftovers keep in an airtight container at room temperature.
If I choose to omit the strawberry/matcha, do I have to add anything to make up for the ingredients I’m not putting in?
Hi, are you saying you will use pink and green food coloring instead of the strawberry and matcha powder? If so, you don’t need to add anything extra unless you’d like to use some sort of extract (like vanilla or almond) for some flavor. Otherwise it’ll taste kind of like a plain sugar cookie.