Welcome to Part 2, Pumpkin Spice Tea Shortbread – Baking With tea. In this recipe, we will be making shortbread cookies with Pumpkin Spice Tea. This is the second in a series of shortbread cookies using tea infused in the butter. They are a delicious addition to your cookie repertoire adding a unique style of cookie. As with the Earl Grey Rooibos Shortbread cookies from Part 1, these Pumpkin Spice Tea Shortbread will follow the same recipe with some adjustments. So enjoy – its easy and fun to do.
Ingredients
- unsalted butter at room temperature
- Pumpkin Spice Loose Leaf Tea
- powdered sugar
- all purpose flour
- salt
- Pumpkin Pie Spice
- casting sugar
Preparing the Tea
This recipe uses a tea that I previously highlighted in Fall Tea Tastings. Its Pumpkin Spice Tea and is delicious. The loose leaf is rough and visibly you can see the spices, so the tea needs to be ground. I use a coffee grinder and it gives me a beautiful powder. And remember, if you don’t have a loose leaf tea, you can use tea from a teabag. Just pour the contents into a bowl and measure from there.
Put the tea and the butter in your mixer. Using the paddle, blend the tea and butter and then let it sit. The tea and butter mixture should sit for 1 – 2 hours. The longer it sits, the more intense the flavor is. This is tea and it will continue to intensify as it sits – even in the baked cookie.
Preparing the Dough
Once the infusing time has passed, you can get ready to prepare the dough. Combine the infused butter with powdered sugar and blend. Then add the flour and salt.
You will initially think that something is wrong with the mixture. It will be very dry and crumbly. But continue to let the mixer work and the mixture will turn into a nice soft dough.
Turn the the dough out on a slightly floured surface and roll out to 1/4 inch thickness. I love this dough – so easy to work with. You can use any cookie cutter you like. I chose to use a 2 inch circular cutter which yields 30 cookies. The dough gives nice clean edges that stay when baked.
Place the cookies on a prepared baking sheet. I like to use a silicon pad but you can also use parchment paper.
I topped the shortbread with a simple mixture of Pumpkin Pie Spice and casting sugar. Mix these two and then just put a generous pinch on top of each cookie.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until lightly brown. I had to bake for 20 minutes, but started checking at 15.
Remove the cookies and allow to cool. You are now ready to enjoy!
Serving these treats
These cookies have the nice flavor of shortbread infused with the essence of Pumpkin Spice – perfect for the fall. The sprinkling of spice and casting sugar give it an extra little sweetness. This cookie would be great with hot cocoa, coffee and of course a hot cup of tea!
Easy to make, using only 5 ingredients for your basic shortbread, these cookies will become a favorite for sure. As my second experiment with tea, I will definitely be making these again. Pumpkin Spice Tea Shortbread – Baking With Tea.
Pumpkin Spice Tea Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2 tbsp Pumpkin Spice Loose Leaf Tea
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tbsp casting sugar
Instructions
- Using a grinder, grind the Pumpkin Spice Tea to a rough powder. This tea is generally very rough in its loose leaf form and will not infuse well unless it is ground.
- Using your mixer with paddle, blend the Pumpkin Spice tea powder with the butter. Allow to sit for 1-2 hours to ensure full flavor of the tea.
- Once the butter has been infused with the tea, preheat the oven to 350° and prepare your baking sheet with either a silicon pad or parchment paper.
- Cream the butter and tea mixture with the powdered sugar.
- Add the flour and salt and blend until a soft dough is formed. This will take some time and will initially start out very crumbly. Continue to mix and it will turn into a soft dough.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out ¼ inch thick.
- Cut out cookies using a 2 inch circular cookie cutter.
- Mix the pumpkin pie spice and casting sugar. Place a large pinch of mixture of top of each cookie.
- Bake on prepared cookie sheet for 15 minutes or until lightly brown.
- Allow to cool on rack.
