Black Tea Caramel Sauce

Friday, December 4th, 2015 by

black tea caramel

Does a dessert exist that isn’t improved by caramel? We recommend trying this recipe with apple pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, bundt cake, brownies, ice cream, or skip the vehicle and eat it alone. The original recipe for this caramel sauce calls for Darjeeling black tea, but any black tea would work. Spiced Chai or Earl Grey would make excellent variations. There are three main steps to making caramel sauce: making a cream mixture, caramelizing the sugar, then whisking it all together with the remaining ingredients while everything is still warm.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
  • 1 tablespoon loose leaf black tea
  • 4 green cardamom pods, cracked
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 tablespoon whiskey (optional)
  • Seeds scraped from a vanilla bean
  • 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions

In saucepan over medium heat, bring the cream to a simmer. Turn off the heat and stir in the tea and cardamom. Steep 3-5 minutes and strain, removing the tea leaves.

Pour the water into a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the sugar to the center of the pan. Do not stir. Swirl the pan gently as the sugar starts to dissolve. Let the mixture come to a boil then cook, carefully swirling only occasionally, until the syrup is a light amber color, 13 to 15 minutes. Lower the heat to medium and wait for the caramel to turn deep amber (it may begin to send up whiffs of smoke), 3 to 5 minutes more. Remove from heat.

Add a quarter of the hot cream into the caramelized sugar mixture. you may want to stand back for this part — the caramel will expand and release a cloud of steam. Whisk in that cream, then the remaining cream. Stir in the maple syrup, whiskey (if using), butter, vanilla, and salt, then return the pan to the heat. Simmer on low, stirring, for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour the caramel into a heat safe container. Serve warm.

Recipe adapted from Seven Spoons

Jasmine Honey Tea Granita

Thursday, August 27th, 2015 by

If you’ve followed our recipes lately, you know we’re fans of fancy looking frozen desserts that require no machine and little effort. Continuing in that tradition, we present the refreshing tea granita! If you’ve never had a granita, it is usually made with water, sugar, and flavor, sometimes fresh fruit, and has a unique texture somewhere between sorbet and shaved ice. It’s exactly what you want on a hot day and a refreshing way to enjoy the sweet, floral flavor of our Jasmine First Grade green tea.

Granita

Ingredients

3 cups near-boiling water

2 teaspoons Jasmine First Grade loose leaf green tea (or two tea bags)

¼ cup honey

Instructions

  1. Steep tea for 2.5 minutes. Green tea has a tendency to become bitter with over-steeping, so be sure to strain the leaves out at this point.
  2. Add honey and stir well.
  3. Pour the sweetened tea into a freezer safe container. The deeper  the liquid, the longer the “granitafying” takes. We used a shallow 8×8 pan.
  4. Freeze for one hour, or until ice crystals begin to form around the edges.
  5. Remove and stir the crystals into the liquid. Return to the freezer for 20 minutes and repeat. Continue this process as the mixture hardens, scraping the surface with a fork as it solidifies, until fully frozen and fluffy.
  6. Store in the freezer until ready to serve. If it solidifies too much, let it thaw a little in the fridge and re-fluff with a fork.

Cold Steeped Almond Tea

Friday, July 17th, 2015 by

Blog Cold Steeped Almond Milk

Most of the recipes we try  in our kitchen/laboratory here are a combination of ideas and flavors we love. Flavored almond milk, cold-steeped iced tea, and spiced tea lattes are things that make the world better, and we decided to bring them together to form a super-beverage: almond milk flavored with loose leaf tea, cold-steeped overnight.

We’ve tried this with flavored black and green teas. Our personal favorite for this treat is Earl Grey. Cold-steeped overnight (12 hours), the flavor is perfect. Serve right away, or strain into a second container to store. Enjoy it over ice, or steam it and drink it latte-style.

What you’ll need

Iced tea jug and strainer (we used a 34 oz Mist Iced Tea Jug which has a strainer built in for loose leaf tea)

4 tablespoons loose leaf tea

34 ounces almond milk (unsweetened or sweetened, depending on your preference)

Instructions

Add the almond milk to your jug, followed by the tea, give it a stir and refrigerate, covered, for 12 hours or overnight. Serve immediately or strain and store refrigerated.

Experiment with this recipe! Try it with rice milk, coconut milk, hemp milk — whatever you like. Experiment with honey, agave nectar, or other sweeteners. Let us know what works!