The best accompaniment to tea since ... tea!

I am not a baker.  I've always categorized baking with chemistry and not with other normal cooking.  It just seems too unforgiving, so many things can go wrong: too much baking soda, too little baking powder, it rises, it falls, it burns, it's undercooked... fugedabowdit.  It doesn't help that I have a friend who could outbake the Ace of Cakes guys blindfolded and using only butter and shredded coconuts.  It just confirmed that there are those who can bake, and then there are those who cover their culinary disasters with shredded cheese.
Everything has changed with this magazine:

Remember Julie and Julia?  That book where the author and heroine tries to go through Julia Child's entire The Art of French Cooking ... every single recipe?  Well, at first I thought that I would do that here with this magazine.  Then I downgraded to just completing every one of the dog-eared pages (never judge a book by its cover; rather judge by the creases in the corners of the pages).  But then ... I got stuck on these:

Earl Grey Shortbread

This is the professional version...

...this is mine!  (I know they look underdone, but I don't like bone dry shortbread)

If you have a stand mixer, these go together in a jiffy.  I think a food processor with a dough blade (plastic) would work just as well.
Here's my modified version (after making them three times in a week, I think I'm qualified to modify):
Earl Grey Shortbread:
3/4 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons roughly crushed Earl Grey tea leaves (or one bag's worth)
1 tsp grated orange rind
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch (I think this might just be the secret ingredient)
pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar together, add tea and orange rind.
Add flour, cornstarch, and salt
Mix until you have a soft dough
Roll out dough between two pieces of parchment paper to the thickness you want (about 1/4") and then cut out the shapes of your choice (you can see I got very creative and went with leaves :))
Place on parchment or silpat lined baking sheet; don't let them touch each other
If using leaves, make indentation of vine with a sharp knife
Cover with plastic wrap (or the parchment paper you used when rolling out the dough ... waste not folks!) and chill for about half an hour

Meanwhile heat oven to 325 (F) until firm and just barely golden (sit down in front of your oven with the light on and watch obsessively at about the 15 minute mark)
Cool, transfer, blah, blah, blah... even I know this part.
And then:

 arrange fetchingly and admire the flecks of steel grey and orange that you have whipped into shape.