Creamy Earl Grey & Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Do you love tea?  Have you used tea in some of your cooking or baking before?  I made some Creamy Earl Grey & Lavender Shortbread Cookies that go perfectly with afternoon tea!

My friends like to joke that I’m a “Tea Granny”.  If you come into my kitchen, you will notice my tea collection.  I love a good cup of tea.

I also love being creative in the kitchen and lately I have been doing lots and lots of recipe development — with recipes that use tea as an ingredient.

Little One’s bus driver loved the Orange Shortbread Cookies I included with the Ginger Molasses Crinkle Cookies in her Christmas present.  Since people seem to really like the shortbread, just for fun, I thought I’d alter my shortbread recipe and make Creamy Earl Grey & Lavender Shortbread Cookies!

I was recently introduced to Steep & Jar and Strawberry Skies (green tea with hints of strawberry and papaya) quickly became a favourite new tea.  Funny story:  It was my seven-year old who commented on the papaya!  I noticed the lovely strawberry flavour immediately, but it was Little One who said, “Mommy, I taste a hint of papaya!”  When I mentioned this to Bridget (founder of Steep & Jar), she was surprised and said that yes, there is papaya in this green tea!  Of course, if I had looked at the ingredients list, I would know that!  Anyway, my seven-year old has got an acute sense of smell and taste.  I don’t think my gustatory perception was as refined as hers when I was her age!

I am also a big fan of Earl Grey and Lady Grey tea, and Steep & Jar has a black tea that I thought would be perfect in a cookie.  Lavender City is perfect in a shortbread cookie!

Creamy Early Grey & Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup  butter
• 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1  to 2 tbs loose leaf Steep & Jar Lavender City (Earl Grey and lavender) tea, ground in coffee grinder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. In a coffee grinder, grind 1 to 2 tbs of Lavender City tea.
2. Sift flour in a fine sieve.
3. Cream butter and confectioner’s sugar in a big mixing bowl, using stand mixer. Mix on high speed until smooth.
4. Add flour, salt and ground tea leaves.  Mix on low speed until combined.
5. When dough is formed, place dough on plastic wrap, roll into log and wrap ends.  Ideally, you want 2 inches in diameter.
6. Place dough in refrigerator for at least 3o minutes.
7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Slice log into discs about 1/3 inches in thickness.
8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.  In my oven, 12 minutes was perfect.  Let cool on baking sheet/s before transferring to cooling rack.  This recipe makes 24 cookies.

Enjoy!

By the way, it’s the Earl Grey tea flavour that is “creamy”.  The cookie itself isn’t creamy.  It’s shortbread!  It’s buttery, and flaky and…shortbread!

* To make the flower imprint in the cookies, I lightly pressed one of my flower-shaped fruit/vegetable cutters into the cookies before putting them in the oven.