Cream of Earl Grey cookies

A little baking experiment.  Some time back in January I managed to come by a box full of recipes incorporating tea (I think it was on boxing-day sale) from David's Tea.  I haven't had much chance to really experiment with it yet, not having had many opportunity to entertain, but I was looking through it and came across instructions on how to make a syrup from any tea.  This made me think of how amazing a Cream of Earl Grey syrup would be, and what I might do with said syrup, which made me think of glazed sugar cookies.

First I made the syrup itself.  It's appallingly easy to make tea syrups.  All you need is four "perfect spoons" of loose-leaf tea (about six teaspoons), one cup of water and one cup of white sugar.  You boil the water, of course, (and boil more than one cup in the kettle or you won't end up with enough, then measure it just before pouring it onto the dry tea) and steep this incredibly over-leafed concoction for 5-7 minutes, then strain it into a small saucepan, add the sugar, and simmer for another 10-15 minutes.  Et voila, tea syrup!

It's very, very dark, as you can see...darker than maple syrup or even most table syrups, probably because I was using a black tea.  Once I had the syrup made, I decanted most of it into a small syrup jug and left the rest in a pyrex bowl to be used in my cookie glaze.  Then I made up the sugar cookie dough.  I also used the syrup in place of vanilla in the cookie dough, although I don't know that it's very noticeable there (and yes I did try a bit of unglazed cookie, of course!)

A few hours in the fridge later, after rolling and baking and cooling and glazing, this was the result:

The glaze could have used a little less syrup, as it was a bit sloppy, but oh my goodness it's delicious!  It's like tea-flavoured candy!  Definitely something I will do again, for sure!