Tutorial Tuesday : Baking With Tea – 5 Easy Ways

Tea is such a beautiful, complex ingredient, and available in such a gorgeous array of flavours. I love the idea of baking with tea, tea inspired food, tea infused recipes, and recipes with tea as an ingredient so here are 5 easy ways to bake with tea.

1. Butter Infused With Tea – The general consensus of the internet seems to be that renowned American pastry chef Robert Wemischner’s cooking with tea cookbook, literally called “Cooking With Tea“, is the best place to start. His book is filled with information on cooking with tea, baking with tea, and includes many recipes using tea as an ingredient. On the website T Ching, he recommends infusing butter with tea at a ratio of 1.5 teaspoons of tea for every tablespoon of butter. You can read his full post and method here.
2. Steep Tea In Milk Or Cream – If your recipe calls for milk or cream, you could heat it until steamy (not boiling), then add your tea and let it steep for 10-30 minutes. Some people say the flavour of the tea doesn’t truly shine with this method, however, I once steeped cream with my favourite orange pekoe tea then churned it into ice cream and found it had plenty of rich tea flavour.
3. Infuse In Sugar – I haven’t tried this with tea, however, I did try this with culinary-grade lavender buds and I feel like the concept is the same. I used a ratio of 1 teaspoon of lavender buds to 1/2 cup of sugar and let them sit in a tightly closed jar for a week, giving the jar a small shake daily to really infuse the sugar with lavender flavour. Afterwards, I sifted out the lavender buds and used the sugar to bake shortbread cookies.
4. Grind And Mix With Dry Ingredients – I once baked an Earl Grey cake. I used my go-to white cake recipe and added 1 tablespoon of Earl Grey tea, which I had blitzed fine in my coffee grinder, to the dry ingredients. It was good, and I could definitely taste the Earl Grey, but something you should keep in mind is that you may encounter some larger pieces of tea when you chew which can make the bite slightly unpalatable.
5. Mix With Icing Sugar To Make A Glaze – Basically, just make a small amount of super strong tea and add it to icing sugar (also called confectioner’s sugar) to make a glaze for sweet loaves and cakes. A good place to start is 2 to 3 tablespoons of tea to 1 cup of sifted icing sugar. Add tea until you are happy with the consistency then spoon or pour over your baked treats.