Earl Grey Snickerdoodles
When I think “earl grey,” I immediately think of tea parties and little sandwiches. I love earl grey but recently got some in a massive tin — I really didn't think I could drink enough to kill that tin before it lost all its flavor.
That had me thinking about desserts, and then I thought about the easiest option: cookies! But then the question was what kind? The first thing that came to mind was shortbread, but I’m not a huge fan of shortbread…so then I decided to play around with the recipe I use for my stuffed Nutella cookies.
In the first attempt, I infused butter with earl grey tea leaves but it didn't have as strong of a tea flavor as I was hoping. It also felt like it was missing something so I asked my IG followers to send me ideas for what to stuff them with in case that sparked any inspiration. Someone suggested lemon/orange curd, but my lazy butt didn't want to go through the whole process of making the curd and then stuffing it…so here is the final result!
These were good, but were missing something
It ended up going much better than I thought. Adding the tea leaves straight to the mix was the right move, and you can adjust the amount of orange zest in the rolling sugar (I thought it was good but Alan thought it could have more orange flavor).
Earl Grey Snickerdoodles
Makes 12 medium-size cookies
Earl Grey Snickerdoodles
Ingredients:
6 tbsp butter, softened
1 generous tbsp of earl grey leaves
1 cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
Pinch of kosher salt
⅓ cup white sugar
Zest of half an orange
Instructions:
With a spice grinder, process the tea leaves into a fine powder. (You can do this with a big batch in a food processor if you plan on using the powder for more cookies or other desserts in the future.)
In a mixing bowl with a stand mixer/hand mixer, mix the butter and sugars until fully combined.
Add in the ground tea leaves, egg, and vanilla extract, and mix until combined again.
In the same bowl, add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt — mix until the ingredients are all incorporated.
With a spatula, get any dough off the mixing attachment and try to incorporate any flour from the sides of the bowl into the dough and form it into a ball of dough in the bowl.
At this point, your dough might look sticky — it should be soft, but, if it sticks too much to your spatula when you try to form it into a ball, try mixing in another teaspoon of flour.
Let the bowl sit in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes (1 hour is ideal).
Once you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
In a small bowl, combine the sugar and orange zest. Use your fingers to massage it all together so the sugar becomes fragrant and it's all incorporated together.
Take a baking sheet and line it with parchment paper or Silpat. Take your dough out and start spooning and rolling a generous tablespoon of dough at a time. If the dough sticks to your hands, wet your hands a bit before rolling it into a ball.
Roll around the dough in the orange zest sugar and make sure the whole surface area is covered. Place each ball on the baking sheet about 2 inches apart — they will spread in the baking!
Bake your cookies for 20 minutes. The edges should be golden brown and the cookies will have flattened a bit.
Take the cookies out and let them cool. Enjoy them with some tea or coffee!
