Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

You know... Honestly speaking, I've never really liked Earl Grey tea... It has a very sharp citrus-y flavour to it which kinda threw me off. I grew up drinking English Breakfast tea which has a mild taste in comparison. Over the years, I kept seeing recipes for Earl Grey cookies, cakes and even ice cream which I completely avoided.

I was re-introduced to Earl Grey tea recently when a friend and I were asked to help out at the church's single conference. There was a casual social mixer after the Friday evening talk and the organisers wanted to serve some non-alcoholic drinks.  My friend and I were tasked with coming up with some creative mocktails to serve at the event.

It was super fun coming up with different drink ideas... and even more fun when we taste tested the drinks to find the right combinations. Coming up with the names was hilarious too... I think we must have been on a sugar high after taste testing all the drinks. ;-) In the end we came up with 3 drinks... "Berry Nice to Meet You" (Ribena with soda water and garnished with a wedge of lemon), "O-range You Glad You're Here" (Orange juice mixed with 7-Up), and lastly "Mr. Earl" (Earl Grey tea with lime juice, fresh mint and a dash of sugar water).

The drinks ended up being quite popular and put Earl Grey tea back on the radar for me. Although I still didn't like the taste of it too much, I understood why it made such an interesting drink. The tea's distinct and bold taste really makes it stand out and be noticed! I decided to give one of the Earl Grey recipes a try and found one for Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies. I did not make any changes to the amount of ingredients used... I only adjust the method slightly so that dry ingredients are added to the wet ingredients (and not vice versa coz that caused the flour to go everywhere). I also expanded a bit on what steps I followed when storing the dough in the fridge/freezer.

Overall, I'm quite pleased at how the cookies turned out and I hope that the guests at Alpha will like them too. They're crispy and buttery and they've got a very flavourful taste to them!

Ingredients (makes around 48 cookies):

2 cups plain flour

4 packets Earl Grey tea leaves

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

227g unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method:

1. With an electric mixer, mix together the flour, tea leaves and salt, until the flour is spotted with the tea leaves. Set aside.
2. Beat the icing sugar, butter, and vanilla extract together. Add the dry ingredients and mix just until a dough is formed.
3. Split the dough in half and place each half on a 22 inches long plastic wrap. Roll the dough into 1.5 inch logs. Wrap each log with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 190ºC.
5. Remove the dough from the freezer. Use a sharp knife and cut the dough 1/4 inch thick each. Arrange the cookie dough on the baking pan 2 inches apart.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes till the edges are slightly browned and let cool.