Tegan is one of the owners of Amoda Tea, a company that I have been learning lots about in the last month (more on that later!).
Connecting with Tegan was a stroke of luck for me – she’s fun, is passionate about tea and is definitely supportive of my efforts of cook and bake with tea more often! Tegan is also turning to the kitchen to come up with cool new ways to use tea, including this awesome shortbread recipe.
guest post by Tegan from Amoda Tea
We found a really delicious Christmas tea from one of our craft tea blenders, Naked Teas. We curated this for our online Craft Tea Shop at Amodatea.com. This particular tea is inspired by the candy cane and smells and tastes absolutely amazing. I couldn’t resist working it into a recipe. It just so happens that the flavours are a perfect match for butter. So, here we go, a gluten free cookie recipe made with butter and more butter.
- 1/4 cup + a little extra unsalted butter
- 4 tsp Candy Cane Tea (You can get your own [url href=”http://amodatea.com/collections/craft-tea-shop/products/new-candy-cane” target=”_blank”]here[/url] or another wondrous tea)
- 1 1/4 cups icing sugar
- 2 tsp whipping cream or milk (I used almond milk!)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp coarse red sugar or coarse white sugar or sprinkles!
- Melt the butter.
- Add the tea leaves.
- Heat on low for 5 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and let steep 5 more minutes.
- Pour through a fine mesh sieve and squeeze out as much butter as you can.
- Let the butter come back to “softened” consistency.
- Simply beat the butter with the icing sugar until fluffy.
- Add the cream/milk/almond milk and vanilla and beat until smooth. I added a little extra almond milk so the icing was a little thinner.
- Spread onto the cookies (or eat it by the spoonful) and sprinkle with the coarse sugar.
- 1 1/2 cups white rice flour + 1/2 sweet rice flour (2 cups of white rice flour works in a pinch)
- 1/4 cup potato starch
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/8 tsp xanthan gum or guar gum
- 1 cup butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, cream butter and powdered sugar. I used med-high speed on an oldschool handheld mixer. You want a thick paste.
- Add the dry ingredients and mix until dough forms. I had to get my hands in there to blend it fully.
- Chill dough for 20 minutes.
- Roll dough into small balls about 1 tbsp each.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes.
- Let stand a few minutes after taking them out of the oven.
- Transfer to a cooling rack.
How to take this recipe to the next level:
- Use Kerry Gold grassfed butter
- Support local – if you’re around us in Vancouver, try Pemberton Distillery Organic Vanilla Extract
- Make your own sweet rice flour blend
Tea lover? Check out our collection of all-natural teas we have curated from the hundreds of amazing small-batch tea blenders across North America. You’re sure to find something new and unique! Connect with us @AmodaTea on Ingstagram, Twitter and Facebook!
Sites that I reference to create this recipe:
*Baking with tea http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2010/05/baking-with-tea-how-to-get-flavor-of.html
Organic Vanilla Extract: http://www.pembertondistillery.ca/extracts_2.html#
Buttercream icing: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/baking_and_desserts/shortbread_with_buttercream_icing.php
Check out the rest of the Cookie Recipe Advent Calendar here!
The content, recipe and all photos used in this blog post belong to Tegan / Amoda Tea and were used with her permission. Please do not reprint any of the content in this post without her express permission.
