How to Use Matcha Powder to Make Healthy Green Muffins

Here's a morning wake-up recipe guaranteed to brighten up your a.m. Use matcha for baking to make these deliciously energizing green tea muffins. Yup, that vibrant green color comes from matcha powder.

Baking with matcha is easy, especially when you whip up this matcha muffins recipe featuring banana and maple syrup. Welcome to Amy's healthy baking class! Now, scroll down for muffin matcha goodness.

When I originally created this recipe a few years ago, I'd just had food sensitivity testing done. This is also when I came up with my Almond Raspberry Banana Baked Rice recipe, which was created from a limited list of foods I could eat at the time

When I got my food sensitivity results, I found out that coffee, one of my greatest loves, was one of the foods I tested sensitive to.

The test results confirmed what I'd already known in my gut (pun intended!) for awhile. Before the test, I was drinking several cups of coffee a day, and I'd often get horrible stomach aches after. I'd sometimes get acid reflux, too.

I spent the next several months experimenting with what type and amount of coffee I can tolerate. I've now found that I can have an espresso, Americano, or latte many days. For some reason, this type of coffee sits better in my stomach than American coffee.

However, I usually need to cap my espresso intake at a couple of beverages. And while I do sip the occasional cup of American coffee, my body much better tolerates espresso-based drinks.

The beauty of food sensitivities is that they tend to change with time, which means that there's a chance that my coffee tolerance will increase in the future! If you'd like to learn more about food sensitivities, take a look at my "What Does It Mean to Have Food Sensitivities?" article for Sonima.com.

I had a hard time deciding whether to share my caffeine battles with all of you. But ultimately, I get my most creative when trying to come up with food solutions. So that's where these tasty matcha muffins (made with culinary matcha powder) come in! 

Does matcha have caffeine? It absolutely does! If you're wondering about matcha powder's caffeine content, here's a quick primer. Per 1 teaspoon of matcha powder, you get about 70 milligrams of caffeine, per Caffeine Informer.

This means that this entire batch of healthy energy muffins contains about 105 milligrams of caffeine. That's because the batch has just 1 1/2 teaspoons of matcha powder, not 1/4 cup! You'll see that you get a lot more caffeine from drinking matcha versus eating it.

When it comes to matcha nutrition, the matcha powder contributes many health benefits. Green tea and matcha have been shown to help with everything from weight loss to disease prevention. Hello, matcha powder nutritional benefits.

To combat my caffeine troubles, I learned how to use matcha in baked goods. You get a buzz from the caffeine in these matcha green tea muffins, and you also get that delicious matcha flavor. Bring on the green tea energy! 

For awhile after my food sensitivity testing, I cut out coffee and espresso completely. Those were some really hard months.

Thankfully, I love tea, and I was curious about how to incorporate a little bit more caffeine into my day. That's where this matcha muffin recipe comes in.

This matcha muffin recipe is made with culinary matcha for a caffeine boost. The muffins also contain cacao nibs for a bit of additional caffeine.

How to make healthy matcha muffins? Well, I'm about to tell you! Baking with matcha really isn't so difficult. If you love healthy matcha desserts, you'll love these green tea muffins.

These healthy matcha muffins are great for a start to the morning because they don't contain a lot of added sugar and they also offer protein from the milk and cottage cheese. If you'd like, you can swap out the dairy milk for almond milk.

I hope you enjoy these banana matcha muffins as much as I do! By the way, if you're looking for gluten-free matcha muffins, you can substitute the regular flour for gluten-free flour in this green tea muffin recipe.

And if you want a vegan matcha muffin, you can use an egg replacement for the eggs and non-dairy yogurt for the cottage cheese.

As always, I encourage trying my recipes to accommodate what you have in your kitchen. Don't have any olive oil on hand? Melt some coconut oil. Out of whole-wheat flour? Add oat flour to the dry ingredients. You can even blend in a little fresh spinach, if you'd like, to ad some veggies.

If you'd like to make smaller portions, try mini muffins. I've done this before, and the batch turned out great. Kids love the smaller portions. A little bit of matcha green tea powder is typically OK for older kids. After all, they've probably tasted matcha ice cream before.

This green food is fun to eat for holidays like St. Patrick's Day! Want to try a green smoothie? Make my vanilla smoothie, which contains all wet ingredients and is fun for kids to blend up.

If you love these matcha banana muffins, also try: 

• spice muffins
• easy coffee cake muffins
• orange juice muffins  

And if you're looking for more matcha green tea recipes, you must taste my matcha latte, a great recipe for mornings. Maybe I'll create more healthy matcha baking recipes soon!  

• Large glass bowl
• Oil mister
• Silicone spatula
• Nonstick muffin tray

This blog post was updated in July 2020.

I'd love to hear from you, now that you've learned how to make one of the most delicious matcha powder recipes out there and found out the answer to the "does matcha green tea have caffeine?" question.

How are you enjoying these matcha baked goods? What are your favorite ways to cook with matcha? How else do you use matcha powder for baking?

Comment below, or tag @amydgorin on Instagram and Pinterest and @amygorin on Twitter 

and Facebook.

• What Does It Mean to Have Food Sensitivities?, Sonima.com
• Matcha Tea, Caffeine Informer

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