Tea & Biscuits

I don't like wedding cakes, not really. They're usually dry, and/or covered in chewy fondant. Also, usually they are white cakes with that sickeningly sweet raspberry filling between the layers, which is gross & wrong. Jenny & Jon's wedding this weekend featured no cakes, but it did have several hundred cookies & a flaming sword instead of a bouquet.

 I'm not going to complain about any of those things.

I made three kinds of cookies (shortbread, salted chocolate, and macarons) for the wedding, and cried at least four times about them. These ones, however, caused no tears, because they are shortbread cookies shaped like teabags, dipped in chocolate, with tiny tags tied on them. My inspiration was this, and while I don't pretend that mine look that good, one of the things I am learning as I make more things with my hands is that not everything needs to be perfect.

This would have been a good lesson to remember while making macarons for the wedding, and also in 9th grade art class.

I used Ina Garten's shortbread recipe for the cookie itself. I always forget when making shortbread how crumbly the dough is (and should be) before baking. This can be a little tricky, especially when shaping, cutting, & poking holes. The key, though, is that you want the butter in the shortbread to stay as chilled as possible until they bake. If you've ever had a greasy shortbread cookie, it's because whoever made them over-worked the dough and melted the butter before they got into the oven. If you've ever had a greasy shortbread cookie, it's because I didn't make them for you.

I think next time I would probably try to find a teabag cookie cutter, just for the ease of things. Also, next time, I will never, ever make these devil macarons again, because they are stupid and difficult and I don't even really like them. But they sure look pretty!

Blueberry macarons with lemon white chocolate cream ganache.
Also known as the cookies that make Ashley cry.