Rosy Earl Grey Sugar Cookies
I decided to bake these cookies in order to lure my landlady into my house.
We live on a small farm property. Our loft occupies the top floor of the landlords’ barn; their tractors are parked beneath our floorboards. Like most Pennsylvanians, Terry and her husband prefer a life intimidatingly industrious. Day and night, I can look out a window and see her pushing a wheelbarrow or pulling a rake, weeding or pruning or harvesting or painting or repairing. Yesterday we crossed paths as I came home from work and she appeared from inside a toolshed with a five gallon bucket in her hand and a bicycle helmet on her head.
“Look out for walnuts!” she warned me gaily, rapping her knuckles instructively on her helmet. “Just had one fall not two inches from where I was working!”
My heart swelled with affection. This woman is the best, most loveable human in the world. But how do I persuade her to join me in doing what I like doing most, i.e., sitting down?
Baked goods are the answer.
This recipe came to me from Yossi Arefi through the New York Times cooking app. I already had all the ingredients in my house, but British Bakeoff has made me cautious about floral flavors that can tilt a recipe towards soapy. I can report these soft, chewy comfort-bombs are anything but. They’re really just a fragrant, fancy schmancy take on an old fashioned snickerdoodle. Though they’re nothing special to look at, they are an absolute treat to bake, filling the kitchen with a warm, citrusy aroma that would be perfect for a Scratch-N-Sniff sticker of the word hygge.
Ingredients
3/4 cup of granulated sugar, plus 1/2 a cup set aside in a small bowl
14 tbsp of sliced unsalted butter
1 tbsp of Earl Grey tea (3 teabags.)*
* I had a delicious loose-leaf Rose Earl Grey on hand that I absolutely love — it took me about 5 minutes to grind it to a powder with a mortar and pestle and pick out the twiggy bits. You want the tea to be very finely ground as it is going to end up in the dough and if it’s gritty, your cookies will be, too.
1/2 cup light brown sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp orange zest
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Combine the butter and the tea in a pan and melt over medium heat, stirring once in a while. Remove it from heat just when the butter starts to sizzle at the edges and set it aside to steep for about 5 minutes.
Pour it into a mixing bowl and combine it with the brown sugar, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, salt and orange zest and whisk it together. If you’re using a stand mixer, about 30 seconds on medium speed will be about right. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.
Add the flour, baking soda and baking powder and mix on low speed (or with a spatula) until it’s all incorporated.
Measure out about 2 tbsp of dough and roll it into a ball, then roll it in the sugar you set aside. Place them 2 inches apart from each other on parchment-lined cookie sheets.
Bake for about 16-19 minutes, making sure to rotate the pans top to bottom and back to front about halfway through so that they bake evenly. They’re done when the edges start to go golden brown and the tops have started to crackle. They should be just set in the middle but not hard and crispy, just like a snickerdoodle.
When they’ve cooled, start texting your neighbors to pop in for a treat.
