Chai Shortbread Cookies

These tender chai shortbreads are slightly sweet with a rich buttery taste and filled with bits of chai tea for the delicious taste of warming spices of cardamom, cloves, ginger, nutmeg. Finish off these cookies with a sweet chai flavored icing for a sweet cookie treat.

Course Cookies

Cuisine Dessert

Keyword chai tea, cookies, shortbreads

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

chilling 1 hour

Total Time 2 hours

Servings cookies

Calories 132kcal

Author Jere' Cassidy

Equipment

Ingredients

Chai Shortbread Cookies

½ cup butter room temperature
1 egg
1 ½ cups rice flour
¾ cup powdered sugar
3 tbls. loose leaf chai tea can use from a teabag
1 cup powdered sugar This is for the icing which is optional
1 tbls Chai Tea
½ cup Boiling water

Instructions

Making Chai Shortbread Cookies

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees
Add the egg and beat slowly to incorporate.
Add the softened butter to a large bowl and beat until light and fluffy.
Grind the chai tea. Using a food chopper, coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle, add the chai tea leaves and grind the tea to make finer pieces. After grinding the tea, remove any of the bigger pieces such as the cardamom pod. This should yield about 2 tablespoons.
Alternatively, you can use the tea from chai teabags. The flavor will not be as pronounced as the loose leaf tea.
Mix the rice flour, powdered sugar, and the ground chai tea together.
With the mixer on low add the flour mixture and beat until the flour is incorporated.
Turn the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and form into an 8″ x 4 ½″ rectangle. Cover with the wrap and chill for an hour.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees
Remove dough from wrap then cut the dough longwise with a knife or a bench scraper then cut crosswise into ½" logs. Place the shortbreads on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.
When done remove the cookies from the baking sheet to a cooling rack.

Chai Tea Icing

Brew a small amount of chai tea by putting 1 teaspoon of tea in a bowl and pour ½ cup of boiling water over the tea to steep. Let sit for 3 minutes then strain the tea.
You can also use a Chai teabag and brew the tea.
In a small bowl add the powdered sugar then add 2 tablespoons of the cooled brewed Chai tea. Stir to make a smooth icing. You may have to adjust and add additional tea if the icing is too thick.
Once the cookies are totally cooled, dip one end of the shortbread cookies into the icing then place them on a sheet of parchment paper. Sprinkle with the remaining ground Chai tea while the icing is still wet.
Store these cookies in an airtight container for a week.

Notes

These cookies can be frozen before baking. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap then in foil. When ready to bake, defrost slightly and slice and bake as directed.

Grinding the loose leaf Chai tea is important since there are large bits of spices. After grinding the tea, remove any spice that is large and would be hard to eat. The cardamom pod always needs to be removed after grinding.

You may also like these other One Hot Oven shortbread cookies

Easy Lemon Shortbread Cookies

Rose Petal Shortbread Cookies

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