Chai Tea Shortbread Cookies

This has been in my to-bake/to-experiment list for a while. I love shortbread cookies with those few simple ingredients: flour, butter, and sugar. By themselves, they make light, buttery, crusty, melt-in-your-mouth cookies. With some interesting flavors or ingredients, the variations are limitless.



I ground 5 bags of Chai tea and added it to my shortbread cookie dough along with a teaspoon of vanilla extract. The cookies came out with subtle spice aroma. I actually got a request that more spice be added. Maybe I'll mix my own Chai spice and use that instead of teabags.



Ingredients

• 2 sticks butter - room temperature


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 2 cups flour plus more for rolling


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 5 teabags of Chai tea


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy - about 3 minutes.


2. Combine salt and flour together and stir into butter mixture. Stir in ground Chai tea and vanilla extract.


3. Form a ball from the dough. Wrap in a plastic wrap and refrigerate over night or freeze for 30 minutes.


4. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Let the dough sit at room temperature for 5 minutes. Roll out the dough on floured surface into about 1/4 inch thick and cut out with cookie cutter.


5. Bake for 35 to 30 minutes. Let cool completely on a cooling rack. Make about 50 cookies.