Earl grey shortbreads with lavender icing

These are possibly the most delicious biscuits ever. They are perfect for tea time and the delicate flavours are a winning combination. I made them recently because we needed a 'blue' layer for our canapé rainbow and blue is not a colour often found in food products. I used food dye for the icing, which made them look really quite pretty.

Ingredients

For the shortbread:
3 earl grey tea bags
2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1 cup butter (room temperature)
3/4 cup caster sugar
dash of salt

For the icing:
Icing sugar
A couple of sprigs of fresh lavender (flowers and leaves both work)
Blue food dye (optional)

How to

1) Open the teabags and mix the contents with the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Scrunch in the butter with your hands until you form a dough. I found mine was a bit too breadcrumb-y so I added some more butter.

2) Place the dough on a sheet of cling film and roll it into a thick sausage. Wrap the ends closed and place in the fridge for at least 30 mins. Or if you're really impatient (like me) stick in the freezer for a bit (but don't let it freeze).

3) Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C. Extract dough from fridge/freezer.

4) Unwrap the dough and slice it into discs about 1cm thick. Place these on baking paper about 2 ins apart and bake for around 12 minutes, until the edges are browning. Remove from the oven and leave to cool whilst you make the icing.

5) Whip up your icing: chop your lavender as finely as you can. Mix some icing sugar with a tiny drop of water - remember you can always add more water but you can't take it away if you add too much! Mix the lavender in with the icing and add a drop of food colouring if you want.

6) Spoon or pipe a bit of icing onto each shortbread. Delicious!