These St. Patrick’s Day sugar cookies use just 2 tablespoons of coconut sugar instead of heaps of “regular” cane sugar. Even better, the maple honey cream cheese frosting uses matcha as a natural food dye. Perfect for kids (and adults!)
Shamrock Sugar Cookies (with coconut sugar)
Prep time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 9 minutes
INGREDIENTS
Sugar Cookies
- 1 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar (or your favorite sugar substitute)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 4 tbs softened butter (unsalted)
- 2 tbs milk
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
- 8 ounces softened cream cheese
- 4 tbs softened butter (unsalted)
- 3 tbs maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 1–2 teaspoon matcha powder
DIRECTIONS
Sugar Cookies
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- Add all cookie ingredients into a large mixing bowl and simply use your hands to mix everything into a cohesive ball of dough.
- Place the dough ball in between two large sheets of parchment paper, and roll the dough until it’s about a quarter of an inch thick.
- Use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out your cookies and transfer to the baking sheets.
- Bake for 9 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges.
- Let your cookies rest for about one minute on the cookie sheets after removing from the oven, and then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool before frosting them.
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
- Soften the Cream Cheese & Butter – Let both come to room temperature for a smoother texture or use a microwave to save time.
- Whip Together – Using a hand or stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy (about 1–2 minutes).
- Add Sweetener & Vanilla – Drizzle in the maple syrup and vanilla extract, then continue mixing until fully incorporated.
- Add Color – as the final step, mix in the matcha powder. Start with a little bit and then gradually increase the amount until the desired color is reached.
- Frost Cookies – Refrigerate for 10–15 minutes before spreading for the best texture. I like to use a 1 tbs cookie scoop to make sure each cookie has the same amount of frosting, and then use a silicone spatula to evenly spread.
- Be sure to read the notes below for advice on ingredients, substitutions, storage and how to prepare this dough 24 hours in advance.
NOTES
- If you plan to make this with your kids, my advice is to make the dough ahead of time before they join you to cut out the hearts and decorate the baked cookies. Simply roll the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours. About an hour before baking take the dough out and unwrap to bring to room temperature. If you forget to take it out in time, unwrap and place on a plate and stick in the microwave for 10 seconds.
- After mixing the dough, give it a taste and decide if you want to add more coconut sugar.
- You can absolutely use regular cane sugar for this recipe if you want, it’s 1:1 ratio.
- I used three different shamrock shaped cookie cutters, which is fun for decorating. You can find the ones I used here:
- When making the frosting, you can taste test and add more maple syrup to make it sweeter. Also, feel free to adjust the amount of matcha powder depending on what shade of green you want. This part is fun, and you can add more as you go to have different shades for some of the cookies.
- A helpful tip when adding color to the frosting, is to remember that you can always add more color but it’s much harder to take it away which would require adding all of the other ingredients to dilute it.
- Matcha powder is one of my favorite natural food colorings. You can get this at the grocery store or on amazon.
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