Earl Grey Tea Cookies, Hard to Screw Up

I chose this recipe from Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen because it looked fairly interesting, and I had all the ingredients in my kitchen already. I realize that's a bit wimpy, and perhaps not exactly in the spirit of the Poff Coff. But hey -- I painted a ceiling yesterday! And while I painting 13 feet over my head, I was thinking, gee, you know what I'm really going to feel like doing after this back-breaking work is done? Bake cookies.

Anyway. The recipe is simple if you've got a food processor. Combine the following dry ingredients and pulse until the tea leaves are "pulvarized":

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon Earl Grey tea leaves*
1/4 teaspoon salt

Then add these wet ingredients and pulse until you've got dough:
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon water
1/2 cup unsalted butter

Voila! Now form this dough into a log and wrap in wax paper to chill for about 30 minutes or so. The rounder your log, the prettier your cookies might look in the end -- that's my theory anyway.



My log-rolling abilities are questionable at best. Anyway. After the dough is nice and chilled, cut the cookies into 1/3 inch slices. (I think I went a bit thin.) Preheat the oven to 375 and cook until the edges are just brown -- about 30 minutes -- until your cookies look like this!

Or, ideally maybe a little prettier than this. Next time I will slice them thicker. But, no matter. They were good! My taste-tester, notoriously uninterested in sweets, ate 5 of them.

I will definitely make these again. The Earl Grey flavor is positively sophisticated!

And lo! My most important discovery is that baking cookies is a lovely way to end a long day. It was relaxing, and satisfying. Plus, one thing I totally forgot to factor in when I was complaining to myself about the chore ahead -- cookie dough. Ah, cookie dough.

*As the recipe notes, there's no need to fancy tea leaves. I just ripped open a couple of tea bags.