Choose Your Own ‘Teadventure’ Butter Cookies

Today’s post is for all the Tea-Lovers out there, myself included.

One of the things I like most about tea in general is its versatility. There truly is a tea flavor out there to suit every palate, preference, season, and even lots of various mild physical discomforts.

There are sweet teas, bitter teas, spicy teas, floral teas, earthy teas. There are teas for nausea, insomnia, sore throats, indigestion, colds/flus, and relaxation. The possibilities with tea are endless.

Its versatility is one of the reasons why I keep a pretty large collection of tea in my pantry at any given time. Lemon-Ginger, Throat Coat, Green, Chamomile, and Earl Grey are the usual suspects. And wouldn’t you know it: all of those flavors are great to bake with as well (with the exception of Green Tea, which is great for you but everyone knows has the flavor of dirt lol).

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then you know that I bake plenty of things to have WITH/ALONGSIDE tea; but I’m a little surprised/embarassed to say that I had yet to bake anything that actually had tea IN it as a primary ingredient.

That all comes to an end today.

Butter cookies are what I like to think of/call a Blank Cavas Recipe. Blank Cavas Recipes start out with a solid recipe that has a minimal list of ingredients (let’s say biscuits, scones, cake, or in this case, butter cookies) but is perfectly delicious ‘plain’ all on its own. But the base recipe is simple and minimalistic enough to where it can tweaked with the addition of other ingredients that don’t alter its basic chemistry but do give it an added/enhanced flavor and personalization.

I’ve used the Blank Canvas Butter Cookie recipe to churn out tons of amazing and delicious ‘variations’, all of which you can search and find here on the blog. Today, I’m adding yet another to the collection with an ingredient that is, fundamentally, a pretty awesome Blank Canvas in and of itself.

Throat Comfort tea is one of my all-time favorites, not just because its ingredients (slippery elm, licorice, cinnamon bark, orange peel, fennel, cardamom, ginger, wild cherry bark) are specifically great for treating sore throats, but because they also just taste plain delicious when put together. When I made the decision to give these cookies a try, I knew I wanted it to be with what’s become my new favorite tea.

Turns out, I was not disappointed. The cookies themselves are a crisp and buttery shortbread, which means the dough comes together in minutes and can stand up well to just about any added flavor. In this case, the flavor was a perfect blend of sweet, spicy, citrusy, licorrice-y (not a real word, but you know what I mean) goodness.

I can hardly wait to try it out with even more tea flavors. The possibilities and ‘teadventures’ are truly endless.

Choose Your Own 'Teadventure' Butter Cookies

Recipe Adapted from Claire Robinson

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons loose tea leaves from about 3-4 tea bags(You can use whatever kind you like; I used Throat Comfort)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

Directions

In a medium sized bowl combine the flour, tea leaves and salt, stirring together a few times with a fork. Set aside.

In a large bowl, use a handheld mixer to cream together the butter and the powdered sugar until light and creamy. Add the vanilla, beating just until combined.

Add the dry mixture int batches, mixing just until combined. Divide dough in half, and portion each half on a sheet of plastic wrap into a log. Seal and tightly twist each end of wrap, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Slice the log into thick disks. Place on parchment or silpat lined baking sheets, 2 inches apart (2 probably needed depending on size of sheets).

Bake until the edges are just brown, about 12 minutes. Let cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks and cool to room temperature.

Note: no one oven is the same, & different baking sheets bake cookies differently. Keeping this in mind, I will ALWAYS test bake one cookie before baking entire sheets of the whole batch, just to get a good idea of how long they should be in the oven and if I need to adjust the way I’ve cut, rolled them out, etc. I highly recommend that you do the same.