Purple Beauty Guava Thumbprints

This is a treat I developed for a tea and olive oil tasting event at local-to-me The Quail & Olive. Though it wasn't my event, Anni had given me some of the components and I was inspired into the kitchen. Per usual. Then I shared the with the guests.

I also had the tasting notes from Josias of Split Tea Co., so I had a starting point that got my culinary creativity flowing. For the Purple Beauty Black Tea, he had mentioned aromas of stone fruit with flavors of guava and earthiness. I already knew that Anni's Tuscan Blend Olive Oil had notes of fennel. So, I went with a tea-speckled thumbprint cookie with a dusting of fennel pollen and a guava jam in the center.

I have always described fennel pollen as culinary fairy dust. It adds something magical to any dish. I have folded it into my La Fée Verte Olive Oil Shortbread, added it to my Roasted Fennel & Cannellini Dip, and garnished my End-of-Days Bloody Orange Mary with it. It's magic I tell you. Magic! And Anni carries it in the pantry section of her shop!

You can see my usual thumbprint cookie recipe in my Bitter Orange and Blackberry Thumbprint Cookies post. But, for this event, I wanted to skip the butter and use olive oil instead.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Tuscan Blend Olive Oil (on The Quail & Olive website)

• 1/2 cup organic granulated sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste (or extract)

• 2 teaspoons Purple Beauty Black Tea (or whatever black tea you happen to have), crushed slighlty

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 2-1/4 cup flour

• Also needed: fennel pollen and guava jam

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

Place all of the ingredient - up to the flour - in large mixing bowl. Use a whisk to create a smooth slurry texture. Fold in the flour until just moistened. Then knead it into a cohesive ball.

Pinch off pieces of dough and form into small balls, about the size of a walnut in its shell. Place each ball onto a parchment or silicone-lined baking sheet, pressing a "thumbprint" into the center of each and slightly flattening. (The cookies will not spread, so make them the size that you want!) Sprinkle each hollow with fennel pollen.

Bake until golden brown, approximately 15 minutes. While the cookies are still warm, spoon about 1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon of jam to each thumbprint. Let cookies cool for several minutes on the sheet before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Stay tuned for a full wrap-up post with all of the goodies I made for the event.