Earl Gray Teabag Cookies

I can’t believe the Downton Abbey movie is already out today! To get in the spirit, I wanted to share these Earl Grey teabag cookies I made awhile back when the show was still airing in real time.

I’ve seen these tea bag cookies online forever and what better opportunity to enjoy them than eating these cookies – or in this case, biscuits – while watching the season premiere of Downton Abbey? Tea is a must while watching this show. After all, it’s only the proper thing to do.

EARL GRAY TEABAG COOKIES

Makes 3 dozen

INGREDIENTS

• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¾ cups butter softened
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoons milk
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon tea leaves or about 7 tea bags (I used Lipton)
• ¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2. Cut open the teabag to take out the tea leaves. In a food processor, pulse together the flour and tea until the tea is just spotted throughout the flour. Alternatively, you can also use a stand mixer, which I did so with a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with mixer until light and fluffy.
4. Add egg, milk, and vanilla extract. Mix well.
5. Combine tea-flour and baking powder in a bowl.
6. Gradually add flour mixture to the butter mixture; beat until combined.
7. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick.
8. Cut out teabag shaped cookies. Cut rectangles, then snip off the top corners. I simply laid a teabag on top of the dough and cut around it as my stencil. Then use the end of a chopstick or a straw pierce a hole in the cookie for the string.
9. Put the cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet that is lined with parchment paper.
10. Bake 12 to 16 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. I would start off with setting your timer for 10 minutes, and then add 2 minutes from there if the cookies haven’t browned at all. Those last 2 minutes make all the difference, so be vigilant! (Constant vigilance, everyone).
11. Cool 2 minutes on cookie sheets on cooling rack.
12. Place chocolate chips in a microwave safe dish for melting. (You can add a tablespoon of vegetable oil per cup of chocolate chips to ensure even melting and prevent it from seizing up but it might make it taste weird.)
13. Microwave it in 30 second increments and stir at each interval. Repeat until chocolate is melted.
14. Dip the cookies straight away in the chocolate.
15. Place them on parchment paper and allow to cool.

Optional: Once the cookies have cooled, you can take some string and thread it through the holes to make them look more like teabags. I added my old watermark as the little label for the cookies, but you could use something Downton Abbey related!

For melting the chocolate, you can also do it on the stove, but I figured the microwave might be easier if you’re doing it for the first time and aren’t used to it, like me. I would also recommend probably using chocolate pieces versus chips, since they didn’t met perfectly and you can see that my cookies are a little clumpy as a result. I also actually used a ½ tablespoon of tea, and while it incorporated really well, you could barely taste it, so I would stick to 1 tablespoon. You could alternatively use any type of tea to your liking to switch up the flavors as well as using different types of chocolate like dark, white, etc.

I also decided to add a little extra something to these cookies, which was incorporating tea leaves into the batter! So not only is the cookie shaped like a tea bag, but it really tastes like it too. These took me forever to thread tbh, and I’m generally an impatient person, which is why I never learned how to sew anything, even if my mother has, on more than one occasion, attempted to teach me the basics with needlepoint. One of these days, I’ll learn.

Some fun facts:

• Fun Fact #1: That table cloth in the pictures used to be my mother’s wedding reception outfit. Still sad she turned it into table cloths! But, the clothing was getting old and frayed after being stored away for so long.
• Fun Fact #2: The teapot is my grandmother’s, so it’s a nice antique in the picture. My mom told me it’s China but the teapot was made and hand painted in Japan… so who knows where it’s really from.
• Fan Fact #3: And then of course the other dishes are mine, haha. I inadvertently ended up putting three generations in one picture with our own mementos. 

These were really delicious and rich because they’re basically butter cookies, and are perfect for tea! I just hope the Dowager Countess would approve, because she’s a hard person to please. I was pretty proud of them, so I guess that’s what really matters!