The original Taylor Swift Chai Cookies! These melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies are laced with warm chai spices and topped with a simple eggnog icing. Even if you aren’t a Swiftie, you’re going to love these cozy, spiced cookies. Perfect for fall baking or holiday cookie boxes!
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These cookies really are fall in cookie form. Soft, chewy, perfectly spiced, and they make your kitchen smell absolutely incredible. They also happen to make the sweetest addition to any holiday cookie box (especially next to Donna Kelce’s Cookies!).
But the thing I love most about these chai sugar cookies, besides the fact that Taylor basically created them, is how they remind me why I fell in love with baking in the first place. It’s about connection. About sharing something simple and homemade that makes people feel seen, loved and comforted.
Taylor Swift’s Cozy Cookie Era
If “sugar and spice” had a theme song, it’d be these Taylor Swift Chai Cookies. Taylor famously loves to bake for friends (Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss… just casually, as one does), and these cookies feel like something she’d show up with on your doorstep.
She first shared this recipe with fans back in 2014 during her 1989 era, adapting Joy the Baker’s Giant Vanilla Sugar Cookies and giving them a chai-spiced twist. Naturally, the internet lost its collective mind. The original post has since disappeared, but Swifties have kept it alive, resurfacing screenshots of her response to a fan’s request for the recipe.
According to Taylor, she spiced them up for “extra cozy holiday vibez” (her words, not mine!) and even served them at her legendary 1989 Secret Sessions (private listening parties where a handful of lucky fans got an early listen to the album and a taste of her baking skills).
So crank up your favorite Taylor Swift song (I’ve had “The Fate of Ophelia” from her new album The Life of a Showgirl on repeat), preheat your oven, and get ready to bake the most famous chai sugar cookie of all time.
- Butter and vegetable oil: Using a combination of fats gives these sugar cookies their rich flavor and signature soft, tender texture. Just make sure your butter is at room temp so it creams properly with the sugars.
- Granulated sugar and powdered sugar: The powdered sugar in this recipe absorbs a bit of moisture from the other ingredients, giving the cookies an extra-tender, chewy texture and that melt-in-your-mouth bite.
- Egg: You’ll need one large egg to bind everything together and add just the right amount of moisture.
- Vanilla extract: Use pure vanilla extract for the best flavor or, if you’ve got homemade vanilla on hand, even better!
- Chai tea bag: Taylor’s original recipe calls for cutting open a chai tea bag and dumping the contents right into the batter. The tea leaves melt into the dough, flavoring every bite with cozy chai spice. But if you don’t have chai tea in your pantry, you can use a mix of spices instead (see my note below).
- All-purpose flour, baking soda and salt: Your standard cookie base. Measure your flour correctly using the spoon-and-level method for the most tender chai sugar cookies.
You’ll also need powdered sugar, melted butter, and milk or eggnog for the icing. And as Taylor said, “I made an icing for the cookies, but they’re fine on their own. The more milk/eggnog you add, the more your icing will become a glaze. But glazes are legit too so basically just LIVE YOUR LIFE.” Yes, girl. Yes.
In place of the chai tea bag, use all of the following spice blend: 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground cloves, and a pinch of black pepper.
- Cream the butter, oil and sugars. You can do this with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or just a bowl and good ol’ electric hand mixer. Cream them together for about 2 minutes, until smooth and slightly fluffy. One of the key benefits of proper creaming is that it incorporates air into the mixture, which gives you a lighter, fluffier crumb.
- Add the egg and vanilla.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and the contents of one chai tea bag (or your homemade chai spice blend). The spices will make your kitchen smell incredible.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Add the dry mixture to the bowl and beat on low speed until no streaks of flour remain. (If you used a hand mixer earlier, switch to a spatula for this part.) The dough should be soft and slightly sticky.
- Chill the dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour, or up to overnight. Chilling helps intensify the chai flavor and allows the butter to firm back up, preventing the cookies from spreading too much in the oven.
- Shape and coat in sugar. I use a cookie scoop to scoop out heaping 1-tablespoon portions of sugar cookie dough, then I roll them between my palms to form balls before coating them in sugar. Place the sugar-coated dough balls on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, leaving a couple of inches between each so they have room to spread. You’ll need two baking sheets for this recipe (I’m currently loving these Nordic Ware pans).
- Bake and cool. Bake at 350°F for 9 to 12 minutes, until the cookies are just set around the edges but still soft in the centers. Cool completely on the baking sheets before icing.
- Make the icing. You could spoon the icing over the cookies like I did or drizzle it, then finish with a dusting of cinnamon or nutmeg for a Taylor Swift-approved finish.
Let the cookies sit for about 10 minutes to allow the glaze to set (if you can wait that long). Brew a mug of tea or, my personal favorite, sip on chai-kissed hot chocolate from my cookbook while you wait.
My Tips for the Best Chai Cookies
- Don’t skip the chill. I know, I know—it’s tempting to go straight from mixing to baking, but chilling the dough keeps your cookies from spreading in the oven (read: thick and chewy). If your dough still feels soft after an hour, chill it for another 20 minutes.
- Short on time? Take a cue from Taylor’s original post that included what might be the most relatable baking advice ever: just use store-bought cookie mix. As she put it, “’Cause you’re busy and you want making cookies to be a chill part of your day. Pow. Done.”
- Use a chai tea you actually like to drink. It’s the same advice I give for cooking with wine. I love Tazo Classic Chai and Trader Joe’s Spiced Chai, but use what you love most.
- Customize the flavor. Want more spice? Use one and a half tea bags or my chai spice blend. Prefer subtle? Stick to one.
- Jazz up the icing. Taylor’s version calls for ¼ teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon in the eggnog icing. She even suggested adding “a few drops of food coloring to make it festive.” You could even top the icing with red and green sprinkles for that extra holiday cookie box magic.
Storage & Freezing Instructions
Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Freezing the dough: Scoop and roll the cookie dough into balls, then freeze them on a parchment-lined baking sheet until solid. Transfer the frozen dough balls to a zip-top bag or airtight container and freeze for up to 2 months. Bake straight from frozen, adding 1 to 2 extra minutes to the bake time.
Freezing baked cookies: You can also freeze the baked cookies (before icing) for up to 2 months. Let them thaw at room temperature, then add the icing and any spices or sprinkles before serving.
Make-ahead tip: If you’re planning for a cookie exchange or holiday baking marathon, bake the cookies a day ahead and wait to glaze them until the day of serving for the prettiest presentation. Check out my Holiday Cookie Baking Tips for tricks and easy ways to keep your cookies looking (and tasting) bakery-perfect.
And that’s it! The chai cookie that broke the internet (in the best way possible). If you bake a batch, I’d love to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments below if you try Taylor Swift’s Chai Cookies!
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 3/4 cup sugar, divided
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 chai tea bag (See Kelly’s Note)
For the icing:
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 3 Tablespoons eggnog or whole milk, plus more as needed
Instructions
Make the cookies:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, vegetable oil, ½ cup sugar and powdered sugar for 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat just until combined.
- In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, chai tea spices and ¼ teaspoon kosher salt. Add the flour mixture to the stand mixer and beat just until combined.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour or up to overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Scoop out heaping 1-tablespoon portions of the dough and roll them into balls.
- Add the remaining ¼ cup sugar to a small bowl then coat the dough balls in the sugar.
- Add the dough balls to the lined baking sheets, spacing them at least 2 inches apart.
- Bake the cookies until they are set, 9 to 12 minutes, then remove them from the oven and let them cool completely on the baking sheets while you make the icing.
Make the icing:
- In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, butter and milk. Thin with additional milk as needed until the icing is spoonable.
- Top the completely cooled cookies with the icing and let it set for at least 10 minutes before serving.
Kelly’s Notes
- In place of the chai tea bag, use all of the following spice blend: 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground cloves and a pinch of black pepper.
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