A new variation of Brown Sugar Shortbread

I have made this Brown Sugar Shortbread (recipe here) more times than I can count. I refrigerate the dough when I make it in summer so that it gets stiff enough to cut cleanly, and it always, always comes out great and tastes so rich and buttery. Next Sunday, my Sunday school class is giving a bridal tea in honor of the daughter of one of our members, and I was delighted to be asked to help. So yesterday, I decided to try making this shortbread with the addition of a teaspoon of Earl Grey Lavender and Roses tea, and it is as delicious as I suspected it would be. I didn't have a tea bag in this flavor of tea, so I just pulverized the tea in a spice grinder.

I'll be contributing the scones and jam and cream to next week's tea, and I decided that I'll take this shortbread, too, just because you can never have too many offerings at a group tea. The tiny little flecks are tea! At first, I was going to do something different and cut these out with my teaspoon-shaped cookie cutter instead of the teapot one that I normally use, but Alex agreed with me that once it baked, it resembled a dog bone, and that wasn't quite the look I was going for. (Plus, the "handle" of the teaspoon cookie was so thin that it broke when I lifted it off the pan, but Alex was happy to eat it, anyway.) A reader once asked if it was necessary to prick the shortbread with the tines of a fork before baking, and it isn't. It's simply my attempt at making these cookies look like that yummy Walker's Shortbread.

When I was asked if I had some teapots and teacups we could use for the tea, I laughed. (If they only knew …) But I suggested we use these tea and toast sets since they'll be easier to balance when everyone is roaming all over my Sunday school teacher's house, where we're holding the tea. I've already started pulling everything out and am greatly looking forward to my first tea in quite some time. We're all supposed to wear hats to the tea, so hopefully I'll have cute photos for you this time next week!