Herbal Dynasty Chai Scottish Shortbread

The time has come. I've infused my butter, and now I get to make tea treats!! First up: shortbread cookies. These seemed like the perfect first foray into tea-infused treats. (Don't worry, I have big plans for cupcakes too!) So, I went through my tea selection and pulled out my Herbal Dynasty Chai from Sereneteaz . This is a really delicious, light chai made with roobios tea, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon & vanilla. It's almost floral, and a good introduction for the non-chai drinkers out there.

I'm pleasantly surprised how these turned out since I've never fully adapted a recipe for myself before. But, they have an excellent, delicate texture with a sweet, tea flavor. I'm thinking over the next couple days the tea flavor will become slightly more pronounced, but it unfolds nicely in your mouth as you eat the cookie. I would like to try this with some other tea varieties.

Tea-Infused Scottish Shortbread
recipe adapted from The Joy of Cooking 75th Anniversary Cookbook

Prep Time: 10 minutes (plus time to infuse the butter with tea)
Total Time: About 1 hour
Yields: 24 - 2" x 1" bars

Ingredients

• 3/4 Cup (1 1/2 sticks) tea-infused butter, softened
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar (plus 1 to 2 tsp, reserved for later)
  
• 1/4 tsp salt
• splash of good-quality vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, beat together butter, powdered sugar, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, salt & vanilla.
3. Gently stir-in the all purpose flour.
4. Lightly knead the mixture until it is well blended.
5. Press the dough evenly into the bottom of an ungreased 8-inch square baking pan. Pierce the dough deeply with a fork all over in a decorative pattern. Then sprinkle with 1 to 2 tsp of sugar.
6. Bake until the shortbread is lightly browned and darker at the edges, 45 to 50 minutes.
7. Immediately cut into bars while still warm, then cool in the pan or on a rack.

Enjoy!!

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!

Yellow Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Frosting

Happy June everybody!! The sun is shining through the trees leaving me in a dappled sunlight and good spirits (for the most part) this June morning. Yesterday I was looking to make something to take to a Memorial Day shindig and so I feel back on cupcakes...because that is my go-to dessert. Who doesn't love a cupcake? (I mean...there are people, I don't think I care much about them...)

Now, I've never been a big fan of yellow cupcakes. They often are dry and tasteless. They are actually quite easy to over-mix (a problem I had yesterday). But this recipe (despite my over mixing) had a wonderful buttery taste with a hint of delicious vanilla.

I must admit that I had an ulterior motive for trying this particular recipe yesterday. I wanted to find a good base for my tea experiments and I think this cupcake will be perfect for flavoring with my infused butter concoctions that I will be creating.

The coffee buttercream comes from my favorite frosting recipe, which is extremely versatile. This time around it did not disappoint!! It actually goes quite well with this delicate, buttery cupcake.

So, if you need something quick and a little simple go ahead and take a batch of these in. I promise, they are not your average yellow cupcake.

Easy Yellow Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Frosting
adapted from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 18 - 22 minutes
Total Time: about 45 minutes, plus cooling
Yields: 24 medium-sized cupcakes

Ingredients (Cupcakes)

• 3 cups of cake flour (If you don't have cake flour handy, replace 1 cup cake flour with 7/8 cup all-purpose flour and 2 TBS cornstarch)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 12 TBS (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted & cooled
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Ingredients (Frosting):

• 2 TBS heavy cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 1 TBS instant espresso (or 4 tsp instant coffee)
• 2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line two muffin tins with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a large bowl. Slowly whisk in the sugar until combined. Whisk in the melted butter in three additions, until completely combined. Whisk in the buttermilk.
4. Sift one third of the flour mixture over the batter and whisk it in (there should still be a few streaks of flour remaining). Repeat twice with the remaining flour mixture and continue to whisk the batter gently until most of the lumps are gone. DO NOT OVER MIX.
   
5. Fill the cupcake liners about two-thirds full. Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out with a few crumbs attached, 18 to 22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking.
6. Let the cupcakes cool in the pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove from the pans and let cool completely on the racks before frosting, about 1 hour.

MEANWHILE ... make the frosting while the cupcakes cool:

1. Stir the cream, vanilla, salt & coffee or espresso together in a small bowl until the salt dissolves.
2. Beat the butter with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until smooth, 30 to 60 seconds.
3. Reduce the speed to medium-low, slowly add the confectioners' sugar, and beat until smooth, 2 to 5 minutes.
4. Beat in the cream mixture. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, 4 to 8 minutes.

Enjoy!!