The singer once mentioned that she likes to add chai spice to sugar cookies for a festive fall twist. Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe was adapted from Joy the Baker’s plain sugar cookie recipe. And while these are without a doubt very good, sugar cookies are usually very sweet and pretty thin. This version of the Taylor Swift cookies is a mix between shortbread and sugar cookies; it’s thick, so soft, dense in the right way, and perfectly sweet and buttery.
Why Are Chai Cookies Taylor Swift’s?
In 2014, Taylor Swift said in a Tumblr post that she added chai to a recipe for vanilla sugar cookies (the recipe was published in 2009). She actually just cuts open a bag of chai tea and mixes it into the cookie batter. In her post, she also provides a recipe for a spiced icing with cinnamon and nutmeg. In the post she says, “I added the chai element to the recipe because I thought it would infuse cozy holiday vibez into the cookie and it really did.”
She was right about that part; the flavor of chai works so well in cookies, especially during the fall or holiday season. Looking for another fall cookie? Try pumpkin spice palmiers. And if you like those puff pastry cookies, try my almond croissant cookies.
My Thumbprint Chai Cookies With Vanilla Buttercream
I do think these cookies benefit from a topping, but rather than a thin icing on top of a thin sugar cookie, this thick and creamy vanilla buttercream is the perfect complement to the soft, spiced cookie. Salted butter helps to balance the sweetness of the dough, and an egg yolk makes it rich and moist. Demerara sugar on the outside gives them a sweet, crunchy edge.
Bake Notes
- Rolling, chilling, and then slicing this cookie dough allows you to get perfectly even, symmetrical thumbprint cookies with minimal cracks. You’ll need one medium-sized circular cookie cutter. Use this to size the log of dough; you want each cookie, once sliced, to fit inside the cookie cutter with just a bit of room to spare.
- I use a soy sauce lid to make the indent in the dough; dip it in flour first to prevent it from sticking to the dough and tearing the cookie.
- When the cookies come out of the oven, you can use a large circle cookie cutter (bigger than the cookie) and rotate it around each hot cookie to make sure they are all the same size and perfectly circular. Put the cookie cutter around one cookie and spin it quickly in circles (while keeping the cookie cutter touching the baking sheet), so the cookie kind of rolls around the inner side of the cookie cutter.
Crumbl-Style Taylor Swift Chai Cookies With Vanilla Buttercream
- Total Time: 2.5 hours
Description
If Crumbl Cookies made a Taylor Swift chai cookie, this would be it. They are thick, soft, cakey cookies with vanilla buttercream centers.
Ingredients
For the Cookies
1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
2 tbsp brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup maple syrup
1.5 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp salt
1.5 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp cardamom
¼ tsp nutmeg
⅛ tsp cloves
1 tsp black tea leaves, optional
1 egg
¼ cup demerara sugar
For the Frosting
½ cup butter, room temperature
1.5 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp milk
Instructions
- In a large bowl with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar for 5 minutes.
- Add the egg yolk and beat for another 2 minutes.
- Add the flour and mix it on low speed (or fold with a spatula), until just incorporated.
- Add the maple syrup and vanilla, and fold to incorporate.
- Add the salt, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, and black tea, and fold gently to incorporate.
- Lay out a long piece of plastic wrap. Scoop the dough onto it and form it into a log lengthwise down the middle of the plastic wrap. Grab a medium-sized circular cookie cutter and form the log of dough so that it fits just inside the cookie cutter (is just smaller than the size of the cookie cutter).
- Wrap the log up tightly in the plastic, twist the ends to secure the dough inside the plastic, and roll the log out gently back and forth with your hands to smooth it and make it as cylindrical as possible.
- Chill the dough in the fridge for 2 hours (it will flatten a bit on the side it’s resting on, that’s fine).
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Beat the egg well with a fork in a small bowl. Pour the demerara sugar onto a large plate.
- Remove the dough from the fridge and unwrap it. Brush the log of dough with the egg wash, coating it on all sides. Roll the log in the demerara sugar so the sugar sticks to the exposed surface. In any spots it missed, pat the sugar on with your hands.
- Slice the dough into ½-inch thick cookies. As you slice, roll the log of dough away from you (this helps keep the cookies rounded).
- Lay 6 cookies out on a baking sheet (you can bake two sheets at a time and refrigerate the extra cookies in the meantime).
- Grab a small cap with a flat top (I use a soy sauce bottle cap because it has deep sides and a flat top). Dip it in flour and dust off any excess.
- Grab the circular cookie cutter you used to measure the log of dough. Place it around one cookie (the cookie should be pretty snug in there with only a little space between it and the cookie cutter). Press the small cap into the middle of the cookie to make an indent almost all the way through to the baking sheet. The cookie should press into the edges of the cookie cutter.
- Repeat with remaining cookies.
- Bake the cookies for 12-16 minutes (mine are usually done at 15 minutes exactly).
- Remove them from the oven and immediately reinforce the indents with the bottle cap (press it into each one again). They can puff up while baking, but you can still mold the baked cookies while they are fresh out of the oven.
- Let them cool on a wire rack.
- In the meantime, make the frosting. Beat the butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, milk, and salt together until smooth.
- When the cookies are cool, fill the centers with the frosting.
- Store them in an air-tight container at room temperature for 3-4 days.
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
I’ve never made slice and bake cookies, but these were easier than I though they’d be. It was fun to make them and have the results turn out so similar to the picture.