Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

Hello everybody~ Merry christmas! Here's another recipe made from tea! I love this recipe because I LOVE EARL GREY TEA. Okay, I think any food that has earl grey tea in it, I love it. That's it. When I came across this recipe online, I knew I had to bake it.



Recipe adapted from Lydia bakes
(Another reason that made me bake it is because of the gorgeous photos of it on Lydia's site. Hop over to see them!)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup Flour
1/3 cup Caster Sugar, plus more for dusting
1/2 tsp Vanilla Paste
1 tbsp Earl Grey Tea Leaves
1 tbsp Finely grated orange zest
150g Unsalted Butter, room temperature

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

2. Sift flour into a bowl and add sugar, vanilla paste, Earl Grey leaves and orange zest and mix in together.

3. Grate the butter into the flour mixture then mix with your hands until mixture resembles large crumbs.

4. Press the mixture together firmly on top of a sheet of baking paper on your bench or work surface.

5. Place another piece of baking paper on top and roll out mixture to about 1 cm thick. (I would suggest that you chill it for awhile so that it will be easier to cut when it is firm)

6. Cut into even sized pieces and carefully place on the baking tray.

7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden.



Once cookies are baked, remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle extra caster sugar on top.
Leave cookies to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before placing on a cooling rack to cool completely.

On Lydia's blog she drizzled the cookies with orange glaze, but in my case I omitted it because I do not want it to be too sweet. Perhaps next time I will try it out with the glaze. It makes the cookies look to enticing! :)

Before I even considered it into my CNY baking list, my mum already instructed me to bake these for Chinese New Year. Alright! Earl grey babies, we'll meet again soon! A month more to Chinese New Year!

Good luck in baking! :)

Awesome Earl Grey Tea Cake

Hihihihi, any readers out there? I'm truly apologetic for not updating this blog for so many months. Previously I was really busy with school work hence I had no time to bake. Therefore, I was on hiatus for several months. However, the long awaited summer holidays have started, and it's time to start baking again! To be honest, I had already baked several times before this post, however all of them were failures (and thus I couldn't post anything up here!) But good news, today I baked something and it turned out so wonderful that I must share it with more people.


My family say that this is the best cake that I have ever baked. Personally I do love it as well! The subtle earl grey tea fragrant that lingers in your mouth after you eat it, and the zesty lemon that complements the tea flavour. Not forgetting the dessicated coconut that adds more texture to the cake. Thumbs up for myself! I'm definitely going to bake this again!


Original recipe from anncoo journal
150g Plain flour
1/8tsp Baking powder
150g Butter, softened
130g Confectioner sugar (icing sugar)
1/2 tbsp Glucose/golden syrup or honey
3 Eggs (70g each)
1/8 tsp Salt
5g Earl grey tea dust from 2 tea bags
20g dessicated coconut
1 tbsp Fresh whole milk
Lemon zest from 1 large lemon

1. Preheat oven to 170C. Line a 19 x 9 x 8cm loaf tin with parchment paper all sides up.
2. Sift flour and baking together twice, set aside.
3. Beat butter, icing sugar and glucose together until light and very fluffy. Gradually add eggs and beat well, then add salt, tea dust, dessicated coconut, lemon zest and milk. Mix well.
4. Add flour mixture and fold through completely using a spatula. Surface of batter should be glossy and smooth.
5. Pour batter into prepared loaf tin and for 50 minutes or skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Note that the baking time may vary according to your oven.
6. When the cake is done, unmould cake and peel away parchment paper.
7. Leave to cool completely before serving. If storing, wrap with cling wrap.

I used a square tin that makes a thinner cake, thus my baking time is about 35 min only. Original recipe uses grounded almond instead of dessicated coconut and after cake is baked lemon syrup is brushed onto it. However the health conscious me has decided to do away with the lemon syrup. If you are interested do visit anncoo journal for detailed instructions!


I'm not kidding when i say that this cake is really gorgeous.

Look at the inside!