Ingredients
- ½ cup softened unsalted butter
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 1 ½ cup powdered sugar
- ½ cup white sugar plus 2 tbsp
- 1 large egg
- ½ tsp vanilla essence
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 ½ tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon plus a pinch
- ½ tsp allspice
- pinch of cracked black pepper
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tbsp of eggnog or Bailey’s for the glaze
Directions
Start by combining the softened butter and vegetable oil. Add the sugar and ½ cup of the powdered sugar (save the rest for later) and whisk until smooth. Then add the egg, vanilla essence and chai spices. Taylor calls for the contents of a chai tea bag. If you’re not a chai tea drinker, that’s okay, because you will be after this and you can probably find most of the spices in your cupboard. Once mixed, gently sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Fold all of the ingredients together using a spatula. Your resulting dough should be firm but not tough or too sticky. Cover your mixing bowl and place it in the fridge for an hour and a half.
Once the dough is chilled, preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit. While it’s heating, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and combine about two tablespoons of sugar and a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon in a small bowl. Then, roll the dough into tablespoon sized balls in the cinnamon sugar until they are evenly coated, and press them flat on the cookie sheet. The nice thing about the consistency of the dough after a little extra time in the fridge is that you don’t even need floured hands to shape the cookies! Bake them for 10-12 minutes and let cool while you prepare the glaze.
For the glaze, Taylor calls for eggnog to wet the powdered sugar, but a splash of Bailey’s will serve just as well in a pinch. Combine the remaining cup of powdered sugar with a pinch of cinnamon and just enough liquid to get the consistency of glaze you prefer. Drizzle over the cooling cookies and enjoy!