Tea and herbal tea is a beverage with plenty of health benefits, so what could be better, than to add tea and herbal tea as an extra nutrition, flavor and fragrance to your home-made baking.

You can turn any of your regular recipes into a vivacious tea flavor. Green, black, oolong, rooibos, chamomile, lavender . . . the possibilities are endless.

Tea gives a distinctive taste to your baking and it’s really fun to experiment using different teas in your baking. Tea can easily be incorporated to add distinctive taste to your biscuits, muffins, cakes or pastries, and it’s actually very easy. There are three different ways you can do it:

Pour the boiling water over the tea leaves, herbal tea or rooibos and leave to steep until very strong, and just replace the liquid content in any recipe with an equal amount of ready-made tea.

Or you can infuse the loose leaf tea into the butter. Use tea that is highly aromatic and butter that has no off aroma or flavor.

• 1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. (You need slightly more butter than your recipe calls for, since some of the butter gets wasted in the tea leaves you later discard).
• 2. Add the loose tea leaves.
• 3. Continue heating the mixture on low heat for about 5 minutes.
• 4. Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow to stand for another 5 minutes or until the butter is audibly dyed by the tea leaves.
• 5. Pour the mixture through a fine strainer, pressing hard on the tea leaves, to get all the butter, and then discard them.
• 6. Let the butters come to a room temperature and then use it as you would regular butter in your baked goods.

You need about 1 1/2 teaspoon of whole leaf tea per tablespoon of butter. Feel free to alter the strength of the infusion that suits you.

The last method is to ground the leaves and add them to the recipe.

Chamomile Shortbread

Ingredients:

• Read more in Bread

  « Peach Pancakes

  Eat The Right Bread–part 2! »

  1 cup ( 2 sticks) unsalted butter

• ½ cup sugar

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• grated zest from 1 lemon

• 1 teaspoon loose chamomile tea

• 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325° F

2. Mix the butter, sugar, and salt in a mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add the lemon zest, loose tea, and flour until smooth. Press into an 8-inch square cake pan.

3. Bake 30 minutes or just until the shortbread begins to turn golden. Cut into 9 squares, then cut each square into 2 triangles.

4. Cool on a wire rack.

ROOIBOS CUP CAKES withRooibos Icing or Rooibos Creme Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

1/2 cup strong Rooibos tea 
3/4 cup soft butter 
1 cup sugar 
2 1/2 cups cake flour 
2 teaspoon baking powder

3, eggs beaten

For Rooibos icing # 1

½ cup confectioners sugar

1 ½ tablespoons strong rooibos tea

For Rooibos creme cheese icing #2

1 cup creme cheese

1 tablespoon confections sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon strong rooibos tea.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (180 °C)

2. Mix flour with baking powder and sugar.

3.Add butter to the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

4. Add the beaten eggs and Rooibos tea. Mix well.

5.Spoon the batter in paper cups or in a muffin pan.

6.Bake in center of oven for 25 – 30 minutes.

7.Cool on wire rack.

8.Decorate the muffins with soft icing.

Make icing # 1: Gradually add confectioners sugar to 1 tablespoon rooibos tea, whisking

until smooth and adding more tea, 1 drop at a time, if glaze is too thick. Drizzle

decoratively over top of cake.

Make icing # 2: Add confections sugar to the creme cheese, whisking until smooth. Add the tea.

Green Tea Pound Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs

• 1 cup flour

• 2/3 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

• 1 tbsp matcha (green tea powder)

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 340° F

2. Oil a loaf pan.

3. In a large bowl mix flour, baking powder and green tea powder.

4. In a mixer, beat the butter with the sugar until it is combined.

5. Gradually add the eggs and beat until light and fluffy.

6. Add the flour, baking powder and green tea powder, until smooth.

7. Pour into a loaf pan or cake pan.

8. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

9. The pound cake will be baked when the sides turn golden brown and pull away from the pan.

10. Cool on a wire rack.

Have fun – I hope that you enjoy this truly delicious and easy recipes!

So the next time, why not use some of your left-over tea in your baking!

Thank you for reading!

Sannel Larson

The copyright of all content (text and images) on this site belongs to Sannel Larson.

The content on this site is NOT public domain (unless specifically identified) and can not be copied on to other websites or into other works.