“Yeah no, I’m not making cookies. I’m not that basic.”

-Me, an hour before realizing that I was going to settle on cookies

…Turns out I am that basic. So, with the holiday season, I wanted to spread a bit Christmas joy and appreciation to the leads/past leaders/mentors in my life by creating a holiday dessert box…which included cookies. One of the things included in this box was oolong tea sugar cookies. I stumbled upon this recipe when I was browsing for recipe inspiration at work and remembered the many oolong tea bags that I had squirreled away in my desk. Coincidentally, this recipe happened to be penned by a recent favorite blogger of mine, Kristina Cho from Eat Cho Food. I was recently gifted her book, Mooncakes and Milk Bread, which you’ll probably hear more of in the future.

So, the base of these cookies are really simple–it’s a sugar/snickerdoodle cookie, with a brown butter variation. The extra twist was that I steeped oolong tea leaves (ripping open about 4 bags worth) in my browned butter. If any of you have an excess amount of tea bags, this was a pretty cool way to make use of them. After letting it steep/cool for about ten minutes, I strained out the oolong brown butter into a separate bowl and mixed it with some sugar, vanilla, and an egg.

The picture doesn’t do it much justice but these wet ingredients took on into a dark gray color. After quickly putting together the typical dry ingredients, I added it to the wet ingredients and mixed it together with a spatula until it came together. The dough took on its own pale gray color, which reminded me of black sesame.

Again, the picture doesn’t do the best job of accurately reflecting the color of the dough. I then stuck the dough in the fridge overnight to chill to a more scoopable consistency.

The next morning, I somehow juggled multitasking three different recipes. I let the dough warm a bit to a cool room temperature before I started scooping and shaping into balls.

Here is where the second twist to the typical sugar cookie/snickerdoodle occurs. Instead of rolling this in just sugar or cinnamon sugar, I ripped open another tea bag and did my best to finely chop the oolong leaves. This step was admittedly a bit difficult since the leaves were already pretty small and me attempting to cut them even further only seemed to result in leaves flying everywhere. In hindsight, I wish I had a mortar and pestle where I could grind these leaves into dust and spare myself the trouble of trying to gingerly chop oolong leaves on a cutting board. After trying to mince the leaves as best as I can, I mixed the leaves in with some sugar. If I rubbed the leaves and the sugar between my fingers, I could smell the aromatics in the oolong sugar pretty clearly.

The next few steps were pretty straightforward. It included rolling the balls in the oolong sugar and then baking it at 350F for 10-20 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned, then letting it cool. The recipe did mention to slightly flatten the balls before baking but I overlooked that detail. However, it didn’t seem to have too much of an effect on how the cookies turned out.

I liked how speckled these cookies turned out. Seeing the flecks of oolong leaves against the gray cookies was pretty cool. They smelled great too. The smell of the oolong was very apparent. Unfortunately, if you asked me how they tasted, I can’t answer that. Because I made just enough for all the people I wanted to give gifts too. So I have no idea what they taste like but based on the way they smell, it can’t be too terrible. Besides, who’s eating enough oolong cookies to judge mine?

I’d make this again. At least, to actually have the opportunity to taste it properly haha.