Tea Desserts
Butternut Squash Muffins with Chai and Chocolate
I grew up under the perpetually sunny skies of California. I did not have the concept of the air cooling and becoming crisp, of the leaves changing and covering the streets in red and gold, and of the need for spice and warmth, making you want to bake. This fall in...
Matcha Soft Serve
Soft serve can get a little boring, but adding some yummy Matcha makes it the perfect blend of sweet and spunky.
Earl Grey Pot De Crème
When my world gets a touch hectic, I frequently turn to the simple pleasures of life to help me pause and enjoy the world around me. For me, comfort foods (in moderation) are one of those pleasures that is indispensable. My favorites are tea and fancy desserts. ...
Cherry Tea Syrup over Lemon Cake
Pouring this compote of ruby fruit over a lemon-tinged cake is pure indulgence.
Caramel Tea Cake
What’s better than tea with caramel and cream? A tea cake flavored with tea and caramel and then topped off with a tea-flavored whipped cream. For those rare occasions when I want to put something into my tea, I give into the urge and add heavy…
Comforting Tea and Shortbread
I can’t seem to get enough of a sandy tea shortbread, sugar coated and simple to make.
Tea and Cognac Soaked Dried Fruit Fruitcake
With an array of beautiful dried fruits chopped into bite-sized pieces, walnuts, and a spiced pound cake, this recipe will make you a fruitcake lover.
Asian Pears and Tea
Asian pears poached in tea for a dreamy autumn treat. Best paired with some lightly-whipped cream and some shortbread.
How To Make Tea Gelato
Quite by accident, the house I’m spending time in this summer is equipped with an ice cream maker – something I’d never used before. Since I happened to show up with too much tea (imagine that), I decided to combine the two…
Stone Fruit with Tea and Cookies
Poaching stone fruits lightly in brewed Yunnan tea with its slightly smoky, brisk, and even peppery notes leads to a simple make-ahead dessert.
Homemade Matcha Mints
Can I combine the ubiquitous breath mint with my beloved green tea? Yes, you can combine the two very easily!
Walnut Crisp in Filo with Tea and Honey Syrup
Flowing out of my new joy in the cup is an idea for a festive but rather simple dessert.
Fuyu and Lapsang
Tea and fruit are a tried-and-true combination; think about all the popular flavored teas where fruit, either dried or flavors created in a lab (not on a tree in nature), are added to tea. Not my cuppa at all. So here is a recipe where real fruit—and seasonal fruit to...
Tres Leches and Tea
This is a time for indulgence, a time of why not. My indulgence? I want to eat cake every day. Baking for me provides Zen moments of calm and focus which are worth every calorie. And drinking cup after cup of good tea is a given at home - spending countless hours,...
Tea, Lemon, and Honey Curd: A Trio of Creamy Contentment
Tea, lemon, and honey are a classic trio. Shaking them up a bit, I like to take them in a new direction when combining them to create a creamy lemon curd with a difference. Only slightly sweetened, this butterscotch-colored concoction allows the tea, the lemon, and...
Celebrating the Season With Fragrant Melon and Tea
With seemingly not much to celebrate in our world at the moment, Mother Nature and those who assist her (the growers, the pickers, the cultivators, the sellers) are truly sowing joy as summer has officially begun at our local farmers markets (visiting them with masks...
Creamy Tea or Is It Tea Cream?
Spring has come and nearly gone with summer on its way. Iced tea season is almost upon us, though even on the hottest days a hot cuppa soothes. But what I crave at this moment is something luxurious and rich and creamy... If you guessed ice cream, guess again... Give...
Time For Tea—Tea Ice Cream, That Is
Return to T Ching Classics: Tea Ice Cream Casting caution to the winds—with the world going to hell in a handbasket or tea caddy—and going to great pains to score some cream, milk, and marmalade (I recently made a few jars from the fruits of my backyard tree), I...
Crèmes de la Crème
Return to Tea Treats For Snowy Days Five ways to flavor whipped cream with tea. As we hunker down to the heart of winter (which nonetheless feels like spring in some parts of the country) my thoughts turn to simple desserts that can be gilded with a luxurious...
Frui-Tea Cake, California Style—Festive and Moist
This time of year, I think of “Oh my? It’s fruitcake weather!” — one of the memorable lines in Truman Capote’s wonderfully incisive portrait of his alter ego Buddy’s time in the South baking with his eccentric cousin Sook in “A Christmas Memory.” However, reading the...
Delicious Stimulation – Times Two
When the weather starts to cool (low 50’s feels cool in southern California), my thoughts turn to the warming flavors of tea and chocolate - two products that share some terroir in common. 'What grows together tends to go together' is my abiding rule. How better to...
Fall-ing Into Tea; Fruit Poached With Tea
Fall is truly here judging by the mounds of persimmons, Asian pears, Kyoho- and Concord-style grapes, and pomegranates piled high on the tables of farmers’ market vendors. Where summer went is hard to say, but I am cheered by the prospect of combining this bounty of...
Fruity, Syrupy Splendor in a Glass
It’s time to kick off the iced tea season! Summer has officially arrived. But why does this ubiquitous drink have to be so predictable and often just one-note? My antidote to bland iced tea is here. It’s here where glorious summery seasonal fruits and our beloved leaf...
Life Is a Parfait Glass of Cherries – and Tea
Finalist in the 2019 Writers Contest – Cooking With Tea Category See the Writers Contest rules and full ongoing list of finalists Late spring is here, and summer is next; which beckons me to take frequent advantage of fresh cherries while they sparkle on the tables at...
Tea and Kumquats, Anyone?
Delicious dessert made with black tea and fresh kumquats is a light and refreshing treat.
Tea with Milk….and Eggs and Sugar; A Flan Recipe with Assam Tea
When the weather cools, I bring the bold, bright, and lively teas to the front of the tea cabinet. Malty Assams speak to me at this time of year. Their warm honeyed notes also inspire me at meal’s end, especially to flavor an egg-rich but not eggy flan; one of the...
Tea Poached Autumn Fruit
Just when you thought you’d tasted a creditable selection of the world’s teas comes along a refreshing surprise—Bitaco tea grown in the Andes from Colombia where it is now spring, heading toward summer. As I sit contemplating the end of summer and confirming that fall...
Easy as Darjeeling-Peach Pie
As a long time tea lover, I believe that pie and a cup of perfectly brewed tea win out any day over the pie and coffee at the quintessential corner diner of your imagination. (Are there any corner diners left?) But not just any pie and not just any tea. The champagne...
Melons and Tea—Summer’s Almost Here
It’s getting close to that time of year when thumping watermelons is an acceptable sport, gauging their ripeness and readiness to be cleaved, peeled, seeded, and chunked. What does all of this have to do with tea? It’s this: a simple sweet-tasting pitcher of green...
Lady Grey’s Favorite Dessert
I must confess: I am not a flavored tea kind of guy. Other than the smoke which fortifies my occasional cup of Lapsang Souchong or real jasmine flowers used to enhance a beautiful cup of Chinese tea, I tend to stick to teas whose leaves are flavored only by the...
Apples, honey and oolong
Return to T Ching Classics: Autumn Baking Sometimes the best ideas for cooking with tea come from a complete upending of one’s preconceptions. How’s it done? In my case I often open the tea cabinet and pick out a tea at random and then another without identifying...
TEAsicles!
Enjoy your tea as a frozen dessert. Makes a great for kids of all ages.
Tea Truffles: Conducting a Symphony of Flavors
Now that we are in full holiday mode, it’s time to think of how tea can take its rightful place on your menus for entertaining. Whether you wish to pair each course you serve with a different tea or do a tea and cheese pairing at the end of a meal, there are ideas...
Dipping Below the Surface: Shortbread Recipe
On the surface, it’s something so simple. Look a bit further, and you realize that it is so complex, as is the case with many things. The process of infusing good tea leaves in good quality water is endlessly fascinating and challenging. Just as the process of putting...
A Plummy Idea: Summer Fruit Poached in Tea
Summer is here and the rainbow of stone fruit has begun coloring the stalls at my local farmer’s markets. Though eating fruit out of hand can be a sublime experience, poaching some of those fruits in black tea is another distinct pleasure. Depending on the sweetness...
Marriages made in tea and dessert heaven
During my recent presentation at the World Tea Expo in Long Beach, CA., I paired five teas with five sweets proving that sometimes our preconceived notions can be turned upside down. I know implicitly that smoky black teas work beautifully with dark chocolate in a dessert and delicate white teas bring out the best in fruity baked concoctions like the
Tea in another form: A jewel of a gelée
What’s better than a fresh-out-of-the oven scone? Give up? A fresh-out-of-the-oven scone spread with tea gelée. Take your favorite tea, brew it, sweeten it lightly with either honey or sugar, and then set the liquid with a bit of gelatin. Allow to cool, refrigerate and
Iced But Not Liquid
As the dog days of summer are winding down (hopefully!) and the thought of cooler days ahead reanimates my wish to cook, I am ready to take my tea in a different form—frozen. Although when the mercury is heading down the thermometer,
Do you love something chocolate-tea?
Fresh off of presenting pairing sessions at the Los Angeles International Tea Festival, which were enthusiastically received, I got to thinking that not only can one pair tea with chocolate, and tea with cheese (yes!);
A rosy, peachy summer
Summer’s around the corner, and though I’m not much of a flavored tea kind of guy, there are a few scented varieties that captivate me, particularly now. Take Chinese congou, most usually a large leafed black tea scattered with fragrant rose petals.
Smoke and Ice
Gearing up for summer, there’s more to tea than simply to ice it. I like it really cold and here you will discover one of the richest but relatively simple ways to enjoy tea in a semi-frozen state.
Tea. Custard. Simplicity.
What’s easy to make, direct in flavor, pleasurable on the tongue, and comforting? My answer: Flan Thé, otherwise known as a baked custard flavored with tea. Comprised of just four ingredients-- whole milk, eggs, sugar and tea—this dessert provides a deliciously blank...
Kenya dig it?
Tea and cream are a marriage made in heaven. Moving away from my long-observed Indian tea habit, lately I have been tasting teas from Kenya, full bodied and fruity with a scotch colored liquor readily achieved.
Tea-sing the best out of summer fruits and chilled tea
It’s that time of year when tea meets ice in a glass (although hot tea is certainly not wholly abandoned in favor of the chilled versions of the beverage). Taking my cues both from this seasonal transitioning to drinking iced tea and the…
Life is a Bowl of Cherries … and Sencha
When I think of the following words – fragrance, evanescence, and seasonality – I think of the many special teas sold fresh, capturing their season, but I also think of fresh cherries whose season seems so short that if you…