I love going to MarthaStewart.com for inspiring and cute ideas for favors and entertaining. She has so many great ideas for everything and I like how all her magazines are all on the same website. It's kinda like a one-stop shop for entertaining ideas, decorating, recipes, crafts, wedding stuff and even gardening how-to's.
Anyway I'm always looking for cute and yummy things to share with my family and friends especially during the holiday season or anytime there's a special occasion. I used to give out Christmas presents or B'day presents but now I just make something or bake for my friends, just because I think it's more meaningful but then again, sometimes it can be for selfish reasons. I get to try out new recipes and well eat them for myself too!
This past week I made 2 kinds of tea cookies, both were very yum with my mid morning / afternoon tea. Just to clarify, not all tea cookies have tea in them, they're just cookies you can eat while having tea or coffee, kinda the same idea as tea cakes or coffee cakes. The first one was the Earl Grey tea cookies that I gave away as favors, wrapped up in cellophane bags, blue ribbon and tag. I was never a big Earl Grey fan, but I wanted to try this recipe I found on MarthaStewart.com. It just looked too cute and very fitting for a afternoon tea shower. The cookie is an icebox cookie meaning that the dough needs to be chilled or frozen before you can cut them up in 1/4 inch slices and baked. This recipe uses about 2 tbsp ground up Earl Grey tea leaves which you can just get from tea bags and grounded using a mortar and pestle or just a coffee / spice grinder. The ground up leaves gives the cookie a very delicate subtle flavor and the cute little flecks. The cookie is also flavored with some orange zest, although might be interesting if I had some form of bergamot to put in. The cookie also has a great crisp to it. Next time I'll try a different kind of tea maybe even matcha, my favorite kind of tea.
The other tea cookie I made was Orange Sable cookies, another recipe I found from MarthaStewart.com. Sable cookies are French butter cookies that are kinda sandy. The texture is a little softer and a bit crumbly like sand. These are also icebox cookies, chilled for about 3 hours before cutting and baking. They have a very nice orange-y flavor and the flecks you see are from the ground up almonds. In this case, I used almond meal I got from Trader Joes. The only thing about this cookie that I don't particularly like is that the orange flavor overpowers the almond flavor, so I suppose I can sub the almonds for something else.
I packaged them 2 different ways for 2 different people (and I dont know why the pic wouldn't rotate anticlockwise). I should get one of those things that can seal plastic so the cookies stay fresher and last longer especially for when I mail cookies across the world.Next time I'll try other shortbread / icebox tea cookie recipes. They last a couple days in an airtight container but usually they're just gone within a short while. You can also make the dough ahead of time, roll them up into whatever shape you like and freeze them until you're ready for them. And just in case you're not into tea, it goes great with coffee or just by itself.
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