#I've made it often enough to have whittled it down from Very Fancy Baking Blog recipe to my level of casual with success

[goatsandgangsters]

I MAKE THESE ALL THE TIME! I got my original recipe from this post but I've simplified it A Lot bc frankly I am a casual baker, but these cookies are something I've learned to do Easily and Well. so if you want really good earl grey shortbread cookies but you're intimidated by those beautiful fancy pictures, here's the very Streamlined Simple Version:

oh wait I'm legally required to share an anecdote before a recipe: ONE TIME I made these for my mom and she loved them. so now Every Single Time I Visit, I have to make a batch of this dough before I leave. yes I gave her the recipe, no she will not make them herself, so that's why I make these cookies all the time. bake them for your loved ones with caution, because they might become a favorite, and then you too will make these cookies regularly

YOU WILL NEED:

5 earl grey tea bags (*YES THIS MATTERS, don't use loose leaf)

2 2/3 cups of flour

2/3 tsp fine grain salt

1 cup confectioners/powdered sugar

1 1/3 cup of butter

gallon-sized/larger-sized ziploc bag

Put flour in bowl. Cut open tea bags* and dump the tea leaves into the flour. Mix together.

Add salt and sugar to flour bowl, mix

Soften/melt butter enough that you can blend it into the dry ingredients. I just use a spoon for all this, you don't need a fancy stand mixer

Once the butter is mixed in enough that dough becomes sticky and damp (😏) and there's no more patches of dry ingredient, put all the dough into a large ziploc bag. Push the air out and seal the bag. Roll out the dough inside the bag until it's a big flat sheet of dough (**this will get you square cookies)

Chill the dough in the fridge for 1 hour (*** but dough can be kept in fridge for several days, will keep)

Cut chilled dough into square cookies (or mash fallen-off pieces into weirdo-bastard cookies as needed)

Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees in my mother's toaster oven. Unsure about your oven. Or frankly my oven. I basically only make these when I visit my mom.

Eat cookies, they taste good

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My little trial-and-error tips:

*YES you need to use earl grey tea BAGS, not loose leaf earl grey. The first time I made these, I thought "but surely my loose leaf will be even better, because it is a Higher Quality Tea from a Nice Tea Company" but I was wrong. With tea bags, the leaves are much smaller/more fine, which can be less ideal for good tea but apparently translates to more flavorful cookies. Fancy Loose Leaf that I put in a bag and gayly hit with my butch partner's meat tenderizer (I don't own a mortar and pestle, don't judge) resulted in cookies that just tasted like normal shortbread. Meanwhile, a box of twinings earl grey teabags that my stepdad bought on bo-go at the grocery store resulted in shortbread cookies that taste like EARL GREY. Use the tea bags, yes it matters. (But also feel free to hmu for my favorite earl grey to drink, because I have OPINIONS)

**The square-cookie-via-bag-method is SO much easier than a) the fancy designs in this recipe or b) the round-cookie method which involves rolling the dough into a log and wrapping it in saran wrap, which I found challenging and messy and difficult to get even. Throw it all in a bag. Make it be flat. It will be relatively even because you are constrained by the size of the bag.

***The dough will keep in your fridge for several days, so if you want multiple small batches of fresh cookies throughout the week, you don't have to bake all the dough at once. Just lop off what you want, bake it, enjoy your fresh cookies, and repeat the next night

Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies