PEACH TEA COOKIES

When your loud mind is kept quiet by late night cab rides and origami in toilets and voices and friendly smiles, it does seem like the sky has opened up for a moment, and a light hits the skyscrapers and the rooftops and your skin and the City looks all pretty and shiny below your feet. But when midnight comes again and reality falls right onto your head from four metres high, the only companion you’re left with is a face so tired and puffy that you could cause criminal offence by the way you look; along with a concerning amount of broken things to fix. It’s only then that you finally realise you’ve got to take your usual crammed bus home and hang your head in shame, have porridge for dinner and employ what’s left of your strength to dig out that recipe you came up with during that part of your life when you were crossing paths with a part-time cookie monster and full-time ally. And even though there’s a high chance of your face being painful to look at for quite some time still, sitting together eating tinned fruit salad and sipping Turkish bottled water and munching peach tea cookies makes you feel like things are a little bit less broken already.

PEACH TEA COOKIES

120ml (1/2 cup) sunflower oil or other flavourless oil

160g (3/4 cup) sugar

80g (1/4 cup) agave syrup

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

the tea leaves from two bags of peach tea

130g (1 cup) plain flour

130g (1 cup) self-raising flour

1 tablespoon cornflour

2 tablespoons soya milk or other non-dairy milk

Preheat the oven to 170°C (340°F) and line two cookie trays. Cream the oil, sugar, agave syrup and vanilla extract together in a mixing bowl and stir in the peach tea leaves. Sift in the two flours and cornflour. Add the milk and stir until everything comes together as a smooth dough. Divide the dough into balls of about 40g each and press each ball into a disc on the cookie tray, placing them apart to allow the cookies to spread. Bake for about 10 minutes, until the tops are slightly cracked and the edges turn golden brown. Cool on the trays for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely. Share with a cookie monster, or a friend, or both.