These shortbreads were loosely inspired by an Arnold Palmer, but using slightly fancier ingredients. I love milk(y) oolong, because it tastes almost like those sweet milk nougat candies I would find in the Chinese furniture stores growing up. So I figured, why not pair that with butter, and make shortbread cookies from those? And then to contrast that, I went with a yuzu filling. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a yuzu curd or just pipe Yuzu Inspiration(yuzu-flavored white chocolate) into the centers of these shortbreads at first, but I opted for the Yuzu Inspiration, just so that the cookies are stackable. The cookies themselves were kind of loosely designed after the French pastry of vol-au-vent, which is essentially a puff pastry cup, made by cutting out a disk of the pastry, then placing a ring of it on top, then baking it together. Now with shortbreads, they obviously will not puff up the same way as a laminated dough, but they can still form a similar cup-like shape that can then contain the Yuzu Inspiration filling. In terms of general difficulty, temperature control is basically everything for this. You need to keep the cookie dough properly chilled so that it is easy to work with – if this is neglected, the dough will just stick to everything. Additionally, the filling is made by tempering Yuzu Inspiration, but fortunately, it is relatively easy to temper than a dark or even semi-sweet chocolate. These cookies are the perfect accompaniment with afternoon tea, to the point where they are even tea-flavored!

Makes 32-36 shortbread cookies:
For the dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp milk oolong tea powder
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk

In a bowl, mix the flour, milk oolong powder, sugar, butter, and salt until everything is combined into a sandy-textured dough. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour, just so that it can firm up. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out 1-inch disks, then cut out 3/4-inch disks from the center of those dough pieces; keep the outer rings chilled, while bunching back together the cut out disks into a large piece of dough again. Reroll that piece of dough and cut into 1-inch disks, rerolling the scraps as necessary. Onto each 1-inch disk, place the dough rings on top. Transfer the dough “cups” to a parchment-lined sheet tray, spacing them 2-inches apart. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Allow the cookies to fully cool.

For the filling:
1/4 cup Yuzu Inspiration
a pinch of salt

Over a double boiler, melt 3/4 of the Yuzu Inspiration with the salt. Take the bowl off heat and stir into that the remaining Yuzu Inspiration until that is fully melted as well. Transfer to a piping bag and carefully pipe the Yuzu Inspiration into the centers of each cookie. Transfer the cookies to the refrigerator and allow the Yuzu Inspiration to set firm, at least 10 minutes.