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!

Experimenting...

Okay, I had an idea on the train home tonight. I was thinking about how I want to find some lavender to make my lavender shortbread which is...amazing. So, my eyes are peeled.

Then I got to thinking ... there's a huge tea boom going on (at least in NYC). I love tea. I love tea related baked goods. Perhaps this is my time to start formulating some recipes.

So I pose this question ... what would you like to try??

Thanks for the input!!