Chai Tea Shortbread Cookies

Tea is for more than drinking.

Until I get my hands on some matcha I'm going to keep baking cupcakes and cookies with the tea in my collection because the result is oh so good! 

This chai tea from Wight Tea Co has to be one of the best chai teas I've ever had so I thought to myself, this will probably be delicious in cookies!

Artsy Flour Shot

Ingredients

• 2 sticks butter salted
• ⅔ cup brown sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon chai tea crushed up
• 1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
• 1 tablespoon sea salt (optional) 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. This all depends on your oven. Mine is really hot so I have it on 350 but if your oven isn't as strong you could stand to put it up to 375
2. Mix the butter and sugar then add in the vanilla.
3. Separably combine flour and chai tea. Add the dry ingredients to the butter, sugar and vanilla.  
4. Form the dough into a log shape to fit the size you want your cookies to be. Wrap with saran wrap and freeze for 20-40 min.
5. Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and cut your cookies to desired thickness. Bake for 11 minutes.

OPTIONAL

1. Melt chocolate chips with a double boiler or a bowl over a pan of boiling water. 
2. Dip cooled cookies in melted chocolate and sprinkle with sea salt

German Apple Pancake

My older sister found a video of a "German Apple pancake" a while back and decided she wanted that to be her sweet. In case you're lost I've mentioned in past posts that for Iranian New Year (Norouz) I gave everyone in my family a ticket for a sweet of their choice, some are still cashing in :) 

The recipe is from the site Tip Hero and is accompanied by a really simple and helpful recipe! 

Check out the recipe here.

Tips: This recipe was fairly simple but I would suggest cutting your slices a bit thinner, the outcome will be less chunky. 

Have you tried any good recipes recently ? Share you favorites with me! 

Peanut Butter Cookies

Pb Heaven. 

I owed some sweets to my brother in law Keenan. He LOVES peanut butter and requested these classic peanut butter cookies! 

These are simple and a favorite among most families but I have never made them! They are easy to make and delicious 

Recipe

2 cups packed brown sugar

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Cream the butter, sugar, eggs and peanut butter in a bowl. 
2. Combine all the dry ingredients - flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and add to the wet mixture
3. Refrigerate for 3 hours or more if you can!
4. Oven should be preheated to 375 (my oven is hot so I did 350) Roll dough balls to desired size and make a cross fork pattern on each by pressing the prongs of the fork onto the cookie. I didn't flatten mine very much because I like thicker cookies :)
5. Bake for 8-10 min or until they begin to brown
6. Chow down!

Tips 

1. Because this recipe has a lot of sugar already I used a "natural" peanut butter with very little sugar. I would suggest doing this unless you want uber sweet cookies
2. The butter melts quickly in these so make sure to refrigerate until the dough is pretty stiff, otherwise you'll get flat cookies. 

Do you have a favorite peanut butter cookie recipe? If so please SHARE :) 

Baking the night away: Black Tea Cup Cakes

Tea & Honey.

I have one older sister and two younger siblings. My "little" sister just got accepted into a competitive writing residency for teens! I decided to make a sweet treat for her as a little congratulations!

Let me tell you something about tea & honey, It's my favorite combination! I love the flavor that honey adds to pretty much any tea I've tried.

I have recently become obsessed with cookie decorators on Instagram like Tiny Kitchen Treats, Obsessive Cookie Designer and District Baking Co among others! I have been baking sugar cookies and trying to decorate them pretty for weeks. I finally broke my pattern and decided to bake something new.

Enter Pastry Affair, I found this recipe and I had to try it! I decided to make cupcakes because I had some pretty cupcake paper and toppers ! 

You can find the recipe here! I followed it exactly except I doubled the buttercream recipe because I'm a fatty who enjoys lots of frosting :) Here are some pictures of my process. 

Here are my tea leaves, post milk!

I bought these on sale...valentine's day?!

The cupcakes aren't super sweet but the honey really comes through in the frosting and it makes it a perfect combination!  

Ceylon Leaf Cookies

Bakinspiration.

Ok, ok.. I know that's not a word but I retrieved a print from Lily & Val! Valerie is an incredible artist and hand draws these images with chalk on a chalk board then digitizes them. I was so excited to get this in the mail. 

Today was really gloomy and this print got here just in time. Life is what you bake it is probably going to be my new life motto!

I decided to take a basic earl grey cookie recipe and use ceylon tea instead.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons grated orange zest
• 2 cups flour
• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1/2 confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons crushed ceylon leaves (or tea of your choice)

1. Zest the orange! 
2. Crush the tea leaves!
3. Cream butter with sugar and add orange zest
4. Mix dry ingredients together
5. Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture
6. Cut the dough in half and roll into logs on parchment paper 
7. Wrap parchment paper around logs and place in freezer until the logs are firm
8. Cut the logs into slices and place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper
9. Bake for 13 -15 minutes or until edges are golden brown

Review: Delicious and buttery. The orange zest is a subtle but great addition to the taste. 

Regrets: I didn't crush the tea leaves as much as I should have 

Royal Icing Experiment- Lessons Learned

Instagram is really a cool platform. I'm constantly finding so many talented people. Recently I keep stumbling upon cookie decorators. These ladies are amazing! The cookies they create are almost too pretty to eat. One of my favorite accounts is @tinykitchentreats! I found this lovely profile and found out that she makes these extra special sprinkles...so of course I had to get some to use on my cookies!

"Slumber Party sprinkles"  - There are mini donut sprinkles in this pack!

For the cookies I used the same recipe I used in "Tea Party cookies". I've reading a lot about royal icing and comparing these decorating videos to my experiences with royal icing...something wasn't right. Apparently there are two schools of thought: meringue powder and egg whites. 

Many use meringue powder just to be safe and others say egg whites taste better and if using pasteurized eggs there shouldn't be any concerns about getting sick . ** This excluded pregnant women and people with weak immune systems**

This time I decided to try egg whites. Literally royal icing is powdered sugar and either egg white or meringue powder, some recipes call for a little bit of water as well. I was trying to achieve the "flooding" consistency which is supposed to dry almost immediately. Check out how the cookies turned out. Note: Regardless of appearance, the were delicious :) 

They're a bit sloppy. I would like to be able to outline them and then fill in the rest of the cookie. I learned that I need to make the consistency a bit more stiff AND most importantly get a different icing bag. My icing bag tip cam off and spilled icing on one of my cookies and it doesn't have enough variety for tip size. 

Other lessons: Donut shaped cookie cutters are the best and slumber party sprinkles make them look more appetizing than regular donuts!

Coconut Chocolate chip cookies- My OWN Recipe!

Recipe by me!

My step father's mom is an excellent cook AND baker. Grandmere makes a MEAN rhubarb pie. One summer day she asked me if I wanted to help her make rhubarb pie for dessert that night and I've been hooked on baking ever since. It's such an amazing process, like a chemistry experiment and it brings so much joy to the people I share it with. 

I've always wanted to make up my own recipes but never knew where to start. There are so many recipes that I've made over and over again where I don't even need to look at the proportions because I know them by heart. I decided to start small with a twist on chocolate chip cookies!

What You'll Need

2 1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (maybe a bit more)

2 eggs

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips, 1 cup semi sweet mini chocolate chips

1 cup shredded coconut

If you're a coconut lover, use more

Directions: 

• Preheat oven to 375 F
• Put the chocolate chips and coconut aside to use at the end
• Combine all the dry ingredients in a  small bowl
• Cream the butter and sugar in a larger bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla
• Beat in the dry mixture into the larger bowl
• Add chocolate chips and coconut
• Place tablespoon size or a bit larger balls on the baking sheet a few inches apart
• Bake for 7-9 minutes or until golden brown

These have a slight coconut taste, not overly saturated. 

Tea Party Cookies!

It's time for a tea party.

I ordered a 3 pack of tea cookie cutters from amazon, thanks Wilton! I got a teapot, a teacup and a muffin. I decided to make sugar cookies and decorate them a bit :) 

Recipe

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

*I used orange*

2 sticks of unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cup granualted sugar

*I used dark brown sugar*

1 Egg

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat Oven to 400°F. Cream the butter with sugar in a mixing bowl until it's light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg along with the vanilla and orange or almond extracts.

Add the flour and salt one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Do not chill the dough and divide into two. On a floured surface roll out each ball. Make sure to cover the cookie cutters in flour before using. 

Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 6-7 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

A tea and chocolate filled Valentine's day!

Baking up a storm. 

I decided to make a bunch of heart shaped treats for my family this valentine's day. I used silicone baking cups to make the mini heart shaped brownies. Marshalls provided an excellent decorating tool! I used all sorts of sprinkles and shapes. Check out what I made!

For breakfast I made my sweetheart some loving breakfast :) 

I went with a group of couples to Max Brenner's chocolate bar after dinner and had the most delicious treats! I tried a white chocolate chai tea which is essentially chai tea with white chocolate ganache. Although I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate this tea was so delicious. I highly suggest it!

The cutest superbowl sweet treats

Football shaped brookies. 

Oh my. Do you ever have trouble choosing between cookies and brownies? Brookies are here to save the day! 

Check out yet another amazing recipe from A Cozy Kitchen! Am I a fan girl? Kinda. Yes. 

After putting a mound of batter on the parchment paper I simply took my fingers and shaped it into a football. Not to worry, the batter isn't as solid as you'd like but even if the shape looks messy they still come out pretty well!

I let these cool completely before taking some store bought icing (I know shame on me) and made little football designs. 

These are super rich, sweet and delicious!

The Superbowl wouldn't be complete without plenty of beer! Flying Dog is a local MD brewery and they just keep knocking it out of the park with their new beers! These two were exceptionally good.

Send me a comment with your favorite superbowl treat or drink!