Hey sweethearts! We’re baking with tea today. You can enjoy these earl grey tea cookies alone or with ice cream as a sandwich – that’s the route we’re taking. The toasted tea adds a warm, sweet flavor to the buttery cookies. They’re so simple you don’t even need a mixer.
Hey there, thinking about surprising your Valentine with breakfast in bed and a side of tea? No? How about just surprising him/her with an afternoon cup of tea? Either way, we have an idea for making that Valentine’s Day cup extra special ~ add some dried rose petals.
Doesn’t that look beautiful? Think about letting your sweetheart add the dried tea and petals to the boiled water themselves, that way they can see the delicate pink petals before they go in the kettle and lose their color. #itsthelittlethings
The rose petals will add a light floral aroma and flavor to any variety of tea. I prefer a black base, but this would also go well with the lighter flavor of a white tea.
All rose petals are edible, but not all are created/tended equally; be sure to purchase dried rose petals that were grown and processed without any pesticides or additional chemicals.
So simple, but so sweet for your special someone on Valentine’s Day.
How does that saying go, it’s 5 o’clock summer somewhere? At first I felt funny suggesting a milkshake recipe in the middle of January, but Sarah and I are such shake fans that we never pass one up, no matter the time of year, and I’m guessing we have a few readers with the same priorities.
I know this is going to sound absurd, but I remember everything about the first time I tried a Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino (GTF). I was in Boston during a hot summer struggling to do my research on a Saturday, living on a meager grad student budget, and decided that I needed a treat. The GTF it was, and I swear it was the most delicious thing I had in weeks… possibly a reaction to how grey my life was feeling? Dramatic much? Anyway, to this day I love GTFs, but admittedly I still rarely order them. They are never as good as that first one and I still don’t like paying that much for a drink. BUT I have found the perfect homemade alternative : a green tea milkshake!
I was stumbling over my computer keys this afternoon while starting this post because I keep wanting to just write chai, but I know that’s not correct, so let’s get some vocabulary out of the way and then get on with this post.
Chai is the word for tea in India. Masala means spiced or spice mix. So technically, when we Americans are drinking a “chai”, we’re really drinking a masala chai, a spiced black tea, not just a tea. Somewhere along the way we shorted masala chai to chai, and so I’ll stick with that abbreviation throughout this post, even though I’m focusing here on the masala. Or is it the karha?…
There’s nothing I like more than a warm cup of chai in my hands on a chilly winter afternoon. In the past I’ve always purchased either the concentrated liquid chai from the grocery store or tea shop’s chai blend for brewing. Today I want to share a beautifully simple and delicious chai recipe that you can use as the base for personalizing your cup of tea.
Another new word: karha. It’s the name for the spice blend used for making the masala chai. Traditionally, the karha begins with a combination of warming spices. This is commonly cardamom with some ginger, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, or nutmeg; all spices that we are familiar with when baking. In addition to those spices, some karha may include black pepper, fennel seeds, or coriander. You can also add spices like tumeric for their medicinal value. And those lists are not exhaustive, if there’s a spice you like, it’s fair game!
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the spice mixture. In India, the karha varies by region and even by the time of year. And likewise, outside of India, different regions of the world add different spices to their tea depending upon a region’s access to different spices and its palette.
I *almost* feel bad posting another cookie recipe so soon after our ginger chews, but these are worth sharing. If you’re still riding the new-year-resolution-exercise-train, our friends have suggested that the addition of tahini makes these healthy. So there’s that.
This recipe comes from Molly Yeh, and she got it from Danielle Oron’s Modern Israeli Cooking (which I’ve already added to my wishlist!). And to go on a tangent for a second. Have you ready Molly’s blog yet? If not, find some time to sit down and scroll through her creative recipes while enjoying her entertaining writing. That’s some blogger, and I’m so excited that she’s in the process of writing her own cookbook.
Happy New Year’s friends! This morning we took a few minutes from our hectic, kid-wrangling schedule to create some quick and delicious shrub and champagne cocktails. Shrub is pretty much our favorite mixer and champagne is hands down the alcoholic bevy of New Year’s so boom – this post was born. If you’re having a dry New Year’s, no worries, just swap out the champagne for seltzer and ignore the liquor suggestions or stir up some of these delicious mocktails instead! If you’re down to drink, read on!
When Sarah was in town last week, we made it a point to visit Boulder’s Ku Cha House of Tea. We’re excited to tell you more about the shop and its tea house in another post, today I wanted to share some photos and details about the Pu’er tea in a dried tangerine that we took home for our afternoon tea.
To make this specialty a fermented tea is stuffed into the whole rind or mandarins or tangerines. The stuffed fruit is then left to dry, allowing the tea to absorbs the light citrus aroma. The tea leaves can be brewed alone or with broken pieces of the dried tangerine peel, thereby amplifying the citrus flavor.
When Sarah and I were thinking about the long, dark, and cozy winter still ahead, we decided that tea would be the perfect ingredient to carry us through to spring. We’ve always been big tea fans, granted our tea selection can get a bit boring (Sarah has her favorite and I have mine), but we’re hoping that during our “winter of tea” we will learn more about teas, sample new varieties, and even discover new ways to incorporate tea into our lives through baking, cosmetics, and crafts. We’re also excited to use this selection as an excuse to spend more time in our local tea shops, maybe pop into Celestial Seasonings’ factory for another tour, and visit at least one tea house for a ceremony.
Happy Thanksgiving stateside friends! No matter where you’re reading from, these delicious wintery drinks will be cause for celebration. Gather your friends and family (or your cat) and start mixin’.
Fruity Mocktails – A Warm Winter Rice Milk Drink – Champagne Citrus Spritzer – Pumpkin Spice Lattes – Apple Sidecar – Sparkling Cider Mocktails
Have you made a galette? I have the feeling that they’re a trendy-food-of-the-moment, as I keep seeing them pop up on blogs and places like the cooking section of the NYTimes. And you know what I think? If it’s trendy, there might be a reason why… flaky pastry crust and savory fillings. That’s why.
Very simply, a galette is a rustic pie without a pan. The pastry dough is rolled out into a rough circle, the filling is piled in the middle, and then the sides of the dough are turn up and over the filling. It gets baked on a flat pan and that’s it. Simple as pie (I had to say it)! Galettes can be sweet or savory. With a filling of pumpkin, caramelized onions, apple, and ricotta cheese, this one is a little of both. The dough’s whole wheat flour is a perfectly nutty compliment to the savory-sweet fall filling. Enjoy!
