By: Addison Strack & Sophie Johnson

Recipe:

Ingredients:

• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• ½ cup of vegetable oil, such as candle, sunflower, or almond oil
• ½ cup granulated of sugar, plus additional sugar for topping
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 packet chai tea
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, or the seeds of 1 vanilla bean
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350º f and line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or grease generously with baking spray
2. Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed for about 1 minute, or until smooth
3. Add the vegetable oil (may not fully incorporate with the butter, some separation is okay)
4. Add the granulated sugar, powdered sugar, egg and vanilla, beating on medium speed until all ingredients are fully incorporated
5. Cut 1 chai tea packet and empty the crushed tea leaves into the batter
6. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt, or beat on low speed until the flour is fully mixed in
7. For large cookies add two tablespoons of dough to the baking sheet, and for small cookies add one tablespoon to the sheet
8. Press the dough evenly onto the baking sheet until it is about ¼ of an inch thick
9. Sprinkle some sugar on the top of the cookies
10. Bake for 12-14 minutes for larger cookies and 8-10 minutes for smaller cookies, or until they reach a golden brown color
11. Let the cookies cool and set on the baking sheet for about ten minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack

Icing (optional):

• Combine 1 cup of powdered sugar, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon, and 3 tablespoons of milk or eggnog (you can add more or less milk/eggnog to change the consistency of the icing)

Review:

If you enjoy fall and winter recipes, then you may want to try Taylor Swift’s famous chai cookie recipe. This recipe screams cooler weather with hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, and overall chai flavor. It is a spin off of Wilson’s sugar cookies, and it tastes like a more flavorful snickerdoodle cookie. In this article we will cover how these cookies came to be, and give a more in depth review of these delicious cookies.

Before we review these cookies, we want to give a bit of background about their origin. These cookies were first made by Taylor Swift in 2014, when she baked a version of Wilson’s sugar cookies. She has enjoyed baking, and wanted to try out this recipe, as she loves fall, and it is the perfect fall cookie. Fans begged her to release the recipe for the cookies, and eventually she obliged, posting the instructions on tumblr.

Her cookies began to gain more and more popularity when she made these cookies for her 1989 secret sessions listening party. During this listening party, she invited hundreds of fans into her homes across the world. She baked tons of these cookies for her fans, and they were able to meet her cats, hear the new album a month before everyone else, and get a tour of her home.

These cookies are not only a great fall and winter recipe, but they are also a reminder of Taylor Swift’s generosity.

Overall, these cookies were good, but there were a couple of things that could have helped to improve the recipe.

When we tried these cookies, we noticed that they were less flavorful than we had initially predicted. We agreed that adding two or even three packets of chai could have helped to amp up the flavor. We also agreed that adding cinnamon to either the dough, or the top of the cookies before baking could also help to add more flavor to the cookies.

Adding the icing on top is a must. By itself, the cookie is good, but with the icing it is even better. The icing adds more flavor and sweetness to the cookies, and also helps it to have a smoother texture when you eat it. We made the icing with milk, because we couldn’t find eggnog. We both think that with eggnog, the icing might be even better and more flavorful.

Another issue that we ran into with these cookies was with the vegetable oil. We couldn’t find canola oil, so instead we ended up using a little bit of olive oil instead. We couldn’t taste the olive oil in the cookies, but we wanted to mention this to make sure our review is one hundred percent honest. We weren’t sure if the olive oil could have masked some of the flavors in the cookies, or affected the texture of the cookies, so we wanted to bring this up to have a fair rating. Eventually, we are planning on trying the cookies with canola oil and more chai tea packets to see if we can improve the flavor of the cookie.

After reviewing our errors when making the cookies, and thinking of ways to improve the flavor, we have decided to rate the cookies a 4 out of 5.

We agreed that our use of olive oil could have been a big contributor to the flavor of the cookies, and could have affected the flavor without us realizing. We docked one point because we think that the chai flavor was a bit less strong than we hoped. Overall though, these cookies were good, and we would both make them again.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/10/taylor-swift-1989-secret-sessions-video?scrlybrkr=6e9bdaa6