If you like Chai tea and shortbread, you are going to fall in love with these cookies. They are absolutely delightful!
I wanted to make these cookies for my neighbour to thank her for having brought over some homemade Indian food for us. I haven’t run into her yet so I can’t report back on whether her family enjoyed them, but my friends and family thought they were amazing.
I used one of my favourite shortbread cookie recipes from Canadian Living Magazine and added some Indian-inspired flavours.
These cookies would go so well with a warm cup of tea. They’re crisp, buttery, sweet and spicy. The dough is so easy to work with. You’re going to love this recipe!
Lightly spiced shortbread cookies
- 1 cup softened unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup icing sugar
- 2 tsp granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cardamom (see notes)
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp dry ginger powder
- 3/4 tsp loose chai tea (see notes)
- 1/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
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Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
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In a large bowl or in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter, salt, icing sugar, sugar and vanilla until creamy.
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In another bowl, combine the flour and the spices. Stir until incorporated. Then add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until the dough comes together.
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Shape into a ball. Then divide the dough in two.
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Roll out half of the dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/3 of an inch thickness. To prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, use plastic wrap to cover the dough before rolling.
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Use a cookie cutter of your choice to shape the cookies.
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You can reroll the cookie scraps.
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Check the cookies at 15 minutes. They will take up to 18 minutes to cook depending on the size of the cookies and your oven. The bottoms of the cookies should be a light golden brown when they are ready.
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Allow the cookies to cool. Once they've cooled, you can drizzle them with glaze if you like. Either way, they are going to taste great!
- You don't need to purchase loose chai tea to make this recipe. You can just open up a quality chai tea bag and use the contents. If the tea leaves are especially long, you will want to mince them so that they can be evenly distributed throughout the cookie dough.
- If you don't have all of the spices on hand, go ahead and make these cookies anyway. They will still taste great; they will just be a little less spicy. In fact, you can skip the chai spices all together and make the best shortbread cookie recipe out there.
- 1 tbsp almond milk or milk
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
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Whisk until smooth.
