Vanilla Ice Wine Tea Cookies
November 22, 2015
Vanilla Ice Wine Cookies get their fragrant and sultry flavours from the black tea and whole vanilla bean. The intensity of the vanilla heightens the richness and deepens the sweetness of all the ingredients. The crumbly texture of this shortbread gathers interest with the coarse crunch of the turbinado sugar coating. Vanilla Ice Wine Cookies are special shortbreads, but if you don’t have any Ice Wine Tea in your pantry, you can choose practically any tea that you like: green, herbal or black. I prefer the pairing of vanilla with the intensity of black tea.
The recipe was originally conceived with Roobos Tea, but Rivka of Food 52 (where I found this recipe) prefers Earl Grey for its “seriously sultry flavour.” BTW, Thank you Rivka of Food 52 for this award winning cookie recipe. It is delightful and unusual, and has become one of my personal favourites in The Finer Cookie repertoire. Please visit the original post to get another perspective on it.
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Ingredients
- ¼ cup + 1 tablespoon 64 grams 2.30 ounces sugar
- 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons ice wine black tea leaves (about 5 tea bags)
- 1 1 1 vanilla bean, whole, ends trimmed, cut into very small segments
- 1¼ cups 290 grams 5.7 ounces bleached all purpose flour
- ¼ cup 28 grams 1 ounce powdered sugar, lightly spooned
- ½ teaspoon ½ teaspoon ½ teaspoon fine salt
- 1 teaspoon 1 teaspoon 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons milk
- ½ cup softened 114 grams 4 ounces softened unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar
Instructions
MISE EN PLACE
- To see how Mise en Place can benefit you, see The Finer Cookie’s post on why everyone should Mise en Place.
- Measure the Ice Wine Black Tea into a small sauté pan and distribute it evenly along the bottom of the pan. Heat to medium and toast the leaves until they are fragrant. Watch the leaves carefully, so they don’t get too dark, or the flavour will turn bitter.
- Transfer the tea leaves to a bowl and let them cool.
- In a food processor, add the sugar, vanilla bean and tea, and process until finely ground and there are no more large pieces of vanilla bean. This step is very important because if the tea and vanilla are too large, the cookie dough will not hold together. The dry tea will absorb all the moisture around it and cause the dough to crack and fissure.
- Combine the milk and vanilla extract.
- Measure the softened butter.
- Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
MAKE THE COOKIE DOUGH
- Add the powdered sugar, flour, and salt to the food processor bowl with the sugar and vanilla bean and pulse a few times to combine. Then add the milk, vanilla, and butter and pulse several times, until a dough forms.
- Turn dough onto a very lightly floured surface, gather it together.
- Divide the dough in half. Work each half into a roll 1.5-inches in diameter. It’s very important that the dough is well compressed and doesn’t have any air pockets or fault lines. The rolls have to hold together firmly.
ORMING THE COOKIE DOUGH
- Preheat the oven to 325F.
- Sprinkle turbinado sugar on a plate or work surface, and roll each cookie dough log in the sugar, making sure to cover the entire surface of the log well. Wrap log in plastic or wax paper and park the rolls in the fridge or freezer for at least 30 minutes to chill. (At this point, you can leave the cookie logs in the freezer and slice off cookies one by one, whenever the urge strikes.)
- Remove log from fridge or freezer. With a serrated knife, cut 1/3-1/2 inch slices off the log, rotating the log as you go to ensure that cookie slices stay round.
- Transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet, leaving 1/2 inch between each (they don’t really spread, but they need breathing room to crisp up).
BAKE THE COOKIES
- Bake at 325F for 12 minutes, until cookies are just starting to brown. Don’t let them over bake. Leave on the cookie sheet to cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to racks.
- Cookies will keep in an airtight container for several days.
- Labels
- Quick and Easy,
- Savoury
- Tags
- Ice Wine,
- Shortbread
