Earl Grey tea and culinary lavender give butter-rich shortbread cookies an elegantly subtle floral/lemony lightness. Recipe below.

AFTER A WEEK ON THE ROAD, WE WERE BACK HOME. In our house, in our familiar kitchen. Doing our familiar things. And suddenly, we were in the mood to bake—something simple and cozy. These shortbread cookies were exactly that.

Basic shortbread cookie dough—flour, LOTS of butter, confectioners’ sugar—provides a rich blank canvas for all kinds of flavorings. I’ve made shortbread cookies with pecans and rosemary; Marion’s made them with Japanese green tea and bittersweet chocolate. This time, we used Earl Grey tea and lavender.

Food & Wine calls Earl Grey “the standard bearer for tea.” The popular black tea gets its distinctive floral/lemony flavor from bergamot, a citrus fruit native to southern Italy. Here, we pair Earl Grey with a little culinary lavender to up the floral notes. The resulting cookies don’t taste like tea or flowers. They’re rich (thank you, butter), light and subtle—and quite delicious.

We mentioned simple earlier. The handful of ingredients are pulsed into a dough in a food processor. After a brief fridge visit, the dough is rolled into 1-inch balls, flattened into disks with the bottom of a glass, then popped in the oven. Easy, meet peasy.

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Earl Grey Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Earl Grey tea and culinary lavender give butter-rich shortbread cookies an elegantly subtle floral/lemony lightness.

Servings 3 dozen or so cookies

Equipment

parchment paper or silicone baking liners

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons loose Earl Grey tea leaves (see Kitchen Notes)
1/2 teaspoon culinary lavender (a generous 1/2 teaspoon—see Kitchen Notes)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

Instructions

In a food processor, pulse together the flour, tea, lavender and salt, until the tea and lavender are just spotted throughout the flour.
Add the confectioners' sugar, vanilla and butter. Pulse together until a dough is formed. It may seem like it’s not coming together at first. Just keep pulsing and it will—but don't overdo.
VERY IMPORTANT STEP. Transfer dough to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put the bowl in the fridge for 1/2 hour.
After 1/2 hour, preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking liners.
Take dough from fridge and, using your hands, form balls of dough about 1 inch in diameter. This is where you will see the value of chilling the dough; it will form into balls easily, being quite malleable. You can pinch pieces off or add pieces on at will, and it will hold together beautifully.
Place dough balls on lined cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Using a flat-bottomed glass, press the balls to about 1/3-inch thick. The cookie disks may stick to the bottom of the glass, but you can easily twist them off. You can also slightly reshape imperfections and fix cracks in the edge. Wiping the glass on a paper towel occasionally reduces sticking.
Bake cookies, one cookie sheet at a time, for 12 to 14 minutes. Shortbread cookies stay pretty pale, only browning slightly around the edges, so don’t overdo. Just keep an eye on the edges.
Cool cookies on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Kitchen Notes

Loose tea? Tea bags? We drink a lot of tea and always have a tin of Earl Grey loose tea in the house. If you don’t have loose tea, just cut open tea bags and measure out two tablespoons. It will likely be finer than loose tea, so your specks in the cookies will be less pronounced. As an aside, our favorite place to get teas is Harney & Sons. The New York-based company sources and blends Fair Trade Certified™ teas from all over the tea-growing world, and they ship for free. This isn’t a paid statement, just an admiration.

Where to get culinary lavender. You can find dried lavender flower buds in a number of specialty shops. We like the ones we get from The Spice House (no, this isn’t a paid product placement either—we shop there). As a bonus, their flat packs ship free. A little lavender goes a long way, though. Use a light hand or it will take over.

12 thoughts on “Buttery rich, elegantly light: Earl Grey Lavender Shortbread Cookies”

Shortbread cookies are one of my favorite and I love lavender in sweets.

I’ll be trying this soon.

Thanks for another lovely recipe, Terry.

I have to try these – soon!
I have Earl Grey tea from Harney’s, and my lavender is from them too.

Dani and Eeka, I hope you do get to try these. We’ve already made them a couple of times recently. And Eeka, I had no idea Harney’s sells lavender! Even though they’re calling it a tea, I see the ingredients are simply lavender flowers. Perfect!

Is that 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter? I assume so because 1 cup + 2 sticks of butter makes no sense, but just making sure. Thanks.

Yes, Elizabeth, just two sticks, which is one cup. And thanks for catching the typo I saw and meant to fix, but didn’t!

🙂

Delicious cookies! I used about 1/2 tablespoon of fresh lavender from my garden.

We’re so glad you made them, Elizabeth! And thanks for the report on using fresh lavender.

Can these be made in a shortbread mold? Would the baking time be the same? I have made other lavender cookies before, and I love the flavor. Can’t wait to try these.

Sonya, we’ve never used shortbread molds, but I say give it a try! I suggest comparing the timing on our recipe to those you’ve done with the mold as a guide, erring on the side of the mold recipe times. Good luck!

Hello! I want to try this recipe, but was wondering if I could use lavender powder instead of buds? 🙂

I just tried this recipe. 2 TBSP of earl grey tea is way too much. Maybe half the amount would taste good but two tablespoons is overpowering. I did use tea bags of earl grey instead of loose leaf which may have contributed to the flavor.

Sunkyung, I honestly don’t know about lavender powder and can’t find anything online about it other than something Starbucks is using in its beverages. I would probably reduce the amount since the powder may be more concentrated.

Agostina, I’m sorry you had a bad experience with the tea. I suspect it was that the tea from the bags was more powdery than loose tea so 2 tablespoons would actually contain more tea.