Tea Infused Butter

I've been talking about it for months...baking with tea. For those of you here in NYC you know that tea is HUGE. I mean, everywhere you turn there are tea baked goods. Small, local shops. Big, more trendy corporate tea houses. Everywhere you turn, a new tea boutique. (well...maybe it's not THAT big. That may just be wishful thinking on my behalf).

So, I've been wondering "How do you make these delicious tea treats?". The decision I came to, and will blog more about, is that infusing butter might just be a good starting place. Extract all the tea-y goodness from the leaves into your butter and then use this. The theory that I'm working under is that in lighter flavored treats (shortbreads, yellow cupcakes, perhaps sugar cookies?, please post suggestions...) will take that tea flavor now in the butter and run with it.

Infusing the butter is a fairly simple process so, here you have it:

Tea Infused Butter
Prep Time: 3 1/2 minutes
Cook Time: 10 Minutes
Total Time: about 15 minutes plus cooling

Ingredients

• 1 Stick of Butter (8 TBS)**
• 8 - 14 tsp tea (depending on how strong you want it)

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a small sauce pan.
2. Add tea directly to the butter, simmer for about 5 minutes.
3. Remove butter/tea concoction from the heat and let steep for an additional 5 minutes, until the butter is tinted by the tea.
4. Pour butter/tea mixture through a sieve, squeezing as much butter from the tea as possible.
5. Let cool to room temperature and use as you normally would in your baked goods!!

**A few Notes:
For a recipe calling for multiple sticks of butter, just multiply the recipe.

There is a certain amount of butter that you will lose as it will stick to the tea leaves. One
cup of this recipe (2 sticks of butter) will actually yield closer to 3/4 cup of butter. Keep
this in mind and make a little more butter than you think you will need!!

Enjoy!