Almond Chai Cookies

Sick of Christmas cookies yet? Clearly I'm not... I found a special baking issue of Canadian Living at the library last week and copied out this Almond Chai Cookie recipe - thought they would go well with tea or coffee. The in-laws were supposed to visit us last Saturday but it got postponed due to a vet visit instead - so darn, we had to eat all these ourselves!

The dough was easy enough to make. Beat sugar and butter together, then mix in the dry ingredients in three additions. Lots of good spices in the dry ingredients - cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and a bag of cardamom chai tea (I just happened to have a bag) - along with the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and ground almonds. I love using ground almonds in stuff - it made the cookies a little more crumbly and delicate but very yummy.

Each one was topped with a single blanched almond - nice presentation. Notice there were no eggs in this recipe - which means it was quite easy to snack on the dough while I was supposed to be rolling it into balls! I also seemed to have made them twice as big as the recipe called for - oops. This meant they took about 17 minutes to cook instead of 12, and they flattened out quite a bit.

Mmm these were a good choice. A little sweet, a little spicy, and a faint lemony flavour, not sure where that came from (the tea?). Also very soft and buttery - perfect for afternoon tea.