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.
Earl Grey Lavender Shortbread 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.
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!