Time for.....a tea recipe with T2

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends!

This week we've been experimenting with our cuppa thanks to a fab tea recipe card that I picked up in a T2 store. T2 like to share tea recipes, combining their teas with different foods and drinks. As well as the fab recipe cards in store, you can also find a whole host of easy to follow recipes on

their website - including tea-infused ice cream floats, earl grey cakes and matcha mayo!

The recipe card I picked up had three different recipes on which used a different T2 teas - Banoffee Pie, Jersey Caramel and NY Salted Caramel....great for someone like me with a sweet tooth! I opted to try the NY Salted Caramel recipe which features T2 New York Breakfast tea (a black tea blended with cinnamon and vanilla), along with salt, honey and milk.

This recipe is really quick to make and creates a really satisfying cuppa! All you need to do is brew the tea for approx. 4 minutes, then add the salt, honey and milk to taste.

I'm not going to lie - its a bit bizarre adding salt to a cup of tea, but you've just got to go with it. The recipe called for a pinch of salt, I probably didn't add quite a pinch - I'd definitely advise adding the salt and honey a little by little, tasting after each addition. I then added a splash of milk, which made the tea quite creamy and made it look almost like a hot chocolate!

I really enjoyed this tea - once I got the balance of salt and honey right it tasted lovely. It's hard to describe, but it almost felt like I was actually drinking/eating pudding - it would be perfect after a meal when I have a craving for something sweet. 

I'll definitely be trying some of the other recipes on the T2 website and keeping my eyes peeled for more recipe cards!

Have you tried any of the T2 recipes? We'd love to hear which is your favourite!

Thanks for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

Time for....some tea inspired baking with Piacha tea

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having a tea-riffic day.

Today I am sharing with you a little recipe that made me very happy. You may remember that we discovered the fabulous tea from Piacha a while ago - Pia has so many delicious blends on offer, but Black and Cherry is one of my favourites. It's a sweet tea, that I find very refreshing. For ages now I have been trying to include this tea in my baking - always focusing on cakes. But they always fail - with hardly any flavour carrying through to the cake.

Tonight however I decided to try something different - I had seen teabag shaped biscuits all over the Internet (Ok - mainly on Pintrest....the place I seem to spend most of my time!!) and it struck me that maybe I could include Black and Cherry in a biscuit. A lot of the teabag biscuits I came across were flavoured with green tea (often using Matcha powder) but then I came across a couple of recipes which included earl grey tea. After doing a bit of research about whether you can actually eat tea leaves, I decided to give it a go and worked on a recipe using the Black and Cherry tea leaves.....and I'm so glad I did....

Black and Cherry tea bag biscuits
from Tea With Me and Friends

These biscuits are light and crisp and have a beautiful cherry flavour that will make you smile. Plus, they are super simple to make!

You will need:

1.5 heaped tablespoons of Piacha Black and Cherry loose leaf tea

130g plain flour

50g caster sugar

20g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

splash of water

100g chocolate - optional

A straw for poking holes

Bakers twine (or other thread)

This will make: 16 teabag biscuits

Preheat your oven to:

200c or 180c (fan oven)

To make the biscuits:

• First you need to grind up the tea leaves as small as you can - either in a food processor, with a pestle and mortar or like me in a bowl with the back of a spoon.
• Now combine all your dry items (so that's the tea leaves, flour and both sugars) in a bowl, mixing them well
• Next you need to add the butter - rub this into your dry ingredients so you end up with a bread crumb like mixture. Don't worry if it starts to combine together at this stage,
• Now add a splash of water and carrying on combining the mixture to make a dough. At this stage less is definitely more - you don't want a sloppy dough
• It's time to chill your mixture - this is important to stop the dough expanding when baking in the oven. Roll your dough out, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
• Once chilled, we get to the fun part - making the teabags! First put flour on your clean work surface, then roll out the dough until its about 0.5cm and then cut out your little teabag shapes. I used a straw to make the hole at the top of each teabag.

Use a straw to poke holes in the top of your biscuits

• Once you've cut all your teabags, place them onto a cold baking tray and place in your preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the edges of your biscuits turn a golden colour.
• Remove your biscuits from the oven and allow to cool

Tea bag biscuits in the making!

• Once cool you can thread your twine through the holes in the top and dip your biscuits in melted chocolate. Don't forget if you go down the chocolate route you'll need to leave the biscuits to dry before you can tuck in.
• Enjoy with a cup of tea!

Teabag biscuits....perfect with a cup of tea!

To be really honest these biscuits don't really need the chocolate dip - the light cherry flavour is sweet enough. However, if you do add the chocolate it doesn't ruin them either!

These biscuits make a lovely gift for a tea loving friend.....or just gobble them all up yourself (like I did!).

I'm sure this simple recipe will work well with other tea leaves, so if you don't have any Piacha tea at home why not experiment with your favourite tea - just remember to grind up your leaves! If you try a different tea yourself, we'd love to hear what you baked - leave us a comment or send us a photo!

To find out more about Piacha teas and the fabulous tea bar in London pop by the Piacha website!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Baking with Typhoo Tea...part 1!

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - I hope you are well today!

Typhoo Tea are currently celebrating the uniqueness of the great British cuppa by encouraging us all to share our #TyphooMoments. They know that we all enjoy our tea slightly differently.....for example in my household I rarely add milk and never sugar whereas Joe enjoys his cuppa sweet and milky!

As you probably already know I also love a piece of cake with my cuppa - there is nothing better in my humble opinion! So when Typhoo asked me to celebrate my passion of tea and cake by creating a cake recipe or two featuring tea I thought that was a fab idea!

In this post I will share my first recipe - something quite simple, but rather tasty! I decided to take the humble cupcake and add a good splosh of tea!

Typhoo Tea Cupcakes

As you can see for this recipe I used the Typhoo Gold blend - which is a rich, full-bodied tea.

To make 12 of these scrummy cakes you will need:

200ml boiling water

2 teabags

85 grams dried fruit

115 grams butter

115 grams brown sugar

2 eggs

115 grams self raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

To start with make up a nice strong brew using the boiling water and teabags. I left the teabags in the water for quite a while, producing a dark liquor. I then removed the bags and added the fruit and left this sitting until the tea went cold. 

This is really important - do not be tempted (like me) to try and use the tea when it's still hot....this will ruin your cupcakes (a tough lesson when you want to eat cake!!).

Baking with Typhoo Tea

Next you need to make a normal cupcake batter - creaming the butter and sugar together first before beating the eggs in. Next fold the flour into the mixture and add the baking powder, making sure everything is combined well. 

Finally mix in the tea and all the fruit - this will leave you with quite a sloppy cake batter. Transfer the batter into twelve cupcake cases, filling three quarters of the way up the cases.

You then need to bake the cupcakes in a pre-heated oven (180 degrees) for 18 minutes.....and then I recommend letting them cool a little before devouring them!

Typhoo Tea cupcakes - Tea With Me and Friends

I didn't ice the finished cakes as I decided they didn't need any additional topping. Although a light lemon icing would probably be quite nice if you did want to ice the cakes to make them look a bit prettier.

The flavour at first is quite subtle, but develops into a lovely tea taste.....just like drinking a cup of tea! You also get a lovely burst of sweetness when you bite into a piece of the fruit.

Baking with Typhoo Tea - Tea Cupcakes

This is a really simple twist on a basic cupcake recipe, that anyone who enjoys a cup of tea will love. I'm now heading back into the kitchen with more Typhoo tea to try out another recipe - pop back soon to see what I come up with!

The tea used in this post was kindly donated by Typhoo Tea.

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

The Friday Review....Adagio Teas

Hello there,

Happy Friday! Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you've had a fab week!

It's Friday....so we're back with another tea review for you...this week we have been discovering adagio teas who specialise in bringing fresh teas to tea lovers, direct from tea farmers. Their website offers teas, teaware, blends and gifts and includes a range of black, white, green and herbal teas to name a few.

The lovely people at adagio have sent us a selection of teas to try.....and a lovely pink porcelain cup complete with infuser....

Isn't that a cute cup!

So, we decided to try the cup out with the white tropics tea first (you know us - we can't resist a white tea!).

Let's take a look at the tea first....White Tropics is a blend of sweet white tea from China and the flavour of coconuts and pineapple....which sounds like the perfect cup of tea to us!

The tea leaves have a fruity aroma that hits you when you open the packet, there is a distinct smell of coconuts. The blend includes white tea leaves, pineapple flavour, coconut flavour and rose hips.

It is recommended that you use two heaped teaspoons per cup and allow the tea to brew for approximately 3-5 minutes. Let's take a look at the cup we are using to brew our cuppa....

To prepare tea, you simply place leaves inside the metal infuser inside the cup and then fill the cup with hot water. Once brewed you just need to remove the infuser (the cover doubles as a coaster) and enjoy your cup of tea. The cup also comes with a cover....which makes an excellent coaster for the infuser (as demonstrated above).

This cup is perfect for enjoying a perfect cup of tea (e.g. one made with loose tea leaves) with ease and little mess. I have used this at home....but also took it into the office with me! Fab! 

The cup costs £16 from the adagio teas website.

Moving back to the tea itself....

Once brewed the tea was a pretty amber colour and a slightly unusual aroma which was different to the tea leaves before hot water was added.

I really enjoyed the delicate fruity flavour, it was a lovely, refreshing cup of tea....but I wasn't so sure about the aroma. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was...or what I wasn't keen on.

To find out more about the teaware and teas on offer from adagio teas take a peek at their website. We'd like to thank adagio teas for sending us these lovely samples - but please remember that their kind gift has not effected our taste buds and all opinions expressed within this post are our own.

Pop back next week to see what we thought of the other three teas....

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

Time for a....Tea Recipe

Hello there,

Happy Monday! Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you had a tea-riffic weekend!

Since last week's tea recipe proved to be quite popular I decided to head back to the kitchen this weekend and try something new. I have to admit that I am new to creating tea recipes and therefore I have stuck to a similar recipe to last week....using up a different fruit from my fruit bowl.

This time I had some fresh raspberries....

 I had a think and decided to pair my raspberries with some green tea. On this occasion I have used a Dragonfly Tea Emerald Mountain Green Tea which is a light, smooth green tea....

Dragonfly Tea - Emerald Mountain Green Tea

So, this is really simple....it takes a little time, but its easy to make and only uses three ingredients (four if you decide to add honey). 

I took a big handful of raspberries and placed them in my teapot before adding 200ml of boiling water. I then left them to infuse for about three minutes.

Now these raspberries were rather ripe....quite soft and squidgy....and I'm not sure if this helped with the flavour. If you have less squidgy raspberries you might need to leave them infusing for a little longer.

In the meantime I brewed one teabag in 100ml of water for two minutes.

I then added the green tea to the raspberry infusion and let it muddle for another couple of minutes before pouring into my teacup. 

The first thing I noted was the bright pink hue of the tea, it made for a really cheerful cup of tea!

Rachel's raspberry green tea

The flavour was fruity and refreshing, though not particularly sweet. If you prefer a sweeter tea you may want to add a little honey (I taste tested this and it was rather lovely). 

I enjoyed one cup hot and a second cold sometime later - mainly because I got distracted and forgot to enjoy the second cup while it was still hot! However, I am pleased that I also tried it cold as the flavours had intensified and it made a really refreshing beverage (I wish I had discovered it at the beginning of the summer!).

Tea With Me and Friends - raspberry green tea

Again, I haven't got a name for this recipe yet (other than raspberry green tea but that's not very imaginative!), so if you can think of any suggestions we'd love to hear them!

If you try this recipe out at home we'd love to hear what you think. 

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for....a Tea Recipe

Hello there,

Happy Monday!

Well I thought we would start this week with a new kind of blog post from Tea With Me and Friends....how about a tea recipe?

Now we all know that tea tastes great and we all have our favourite teas.....but have you ever thought of trying something a little different with your cuppa? I've found that with a couple of extra ingredients and some time (not much I promise) you can create something quite new with your favourite teas.

Creating Tea Recipes at
Tea With Me and Friends

This weekend I decided to try experimenting with a white tea recipe....and I've come up with something you might like to try at home. Now, I haven't named this yet (I'm open to suggestions), but here is what you'll need:

• White tea of your choice
• two fresh plums
• a little vanilla extract (just one or two drops)
• boiling water 

This makes enough for two cups of tea.

Plum and white tea infusion
Tea With Me and Friends

First off you'll need to slice your plums and add them to a teapot with one or two drops of vanilla extract and 100ml boiling water. You need to leave this to infuse for about 3-4 minutes.

While this is brewing, make your white tea in another teapot (or I used a jug). I used one bag of Dragonfly White Organic Tea, but you can use your favourite white tea. You might remember that we first discovered Dragonfly Tea earlier this year when we tried several different blends.

Let this brew for about three minutes.

Dragonfly Tea - Swirling Mist
Organic White Tea

Next pour your white tea into your plum infusion, give it a stir and leave it to infuse for a couple of minutes (it will be worth the wait I promise!). 

Now your tea is ready to enjoy!

You will end up with a pretty dark amber colour and the tea will smell sweet. The flavour is fruity with a slight vanilla hint. 

It tastes great as a hot beverage, but I also discovered that if you happen to leave this tea (aka forgetting about your cuppa) and come back to it later it tastes great as a cold tea too - very refreshing!

I hope you try this recipe at home - if you do let me know what you think. I'd also love to hear any recipe name suggestions you might have for this....leave us a comment below!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel