Not only CAN you bake with tea, you definitely SHOULD*

*A short guide on how to incorporate tea and herbal infusions into your baked goods and desserts

Jun 03, 2024

“Tea is so infused in our way of life that we overlook its versatility. It's subtle aromatics make it a joy to bake with, and the increasingly popular herbal teas can only expand your repertoire” Ruby Tandoh

Hello, and welcome to Newsletter No 29 here on Substack! Thank you for stopping by. If you are already subscribed - THANK YOU! Seeing so many of you read my newsletter each week means the world to me! And if you are not yet a subscriber, hit the link below if you are interested in recipes as well as tips and tricks to make the most of our increasingly eclectic pantries and a good dose of my at times random musings about all things food!

Summery Fruit Salad sweetened with a Jasmine Tea Simple Syrup

If you have been reading my newsletters for a while, you will know that I am all about making the most of our increasingly eclectic pantries and finding new and interesting ways to flavour desserts and baked goods. And one part of our pantries that I feel is often shamefully overlooked is the tea shelf - which is full of possibilities for new flavours and flavour combinations!

When you think about it, there really is an extraordinary range of flavours to be explored when it comes to different teas and herbal infusions - from citrussy (e.g. Earl Grey) to fresh and herbal (Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Matcha for example), smokey (Lapsang Souchong), toasted (Soba-cha - toasted Buckwheat tea), chocolatey / maltey (Assam and Hojicha for example), floral (e.g. Jasmine, Darjeeling) or peachy (Osmanthus), to name just a few examples. So today I will talk about all things tea and herbal infusions and how to use them in your baked goods and desserts. I will also share a recipe for a Summery Fruit Salad sweetened with a Jasmine Tea Simple Syrup - a straightforward yet really delicious recipe to elevate the humble fruit salad into something a little bit special and perfect for making the most of all the different berries appearing at farmers’ markets right now.

Tea vs herbal infusions: What’s the difference? And does it matter?

Now, teas and herbal infusions are not the same thing - a tea being made from infusing the processed leaves of Camellia Sinensis in hot water (Camellia Sinensis is the plant which gives us white tea, green tea, black teas such as Darjeeling or Assam, Oolong tea and Pu-erh tea depending on how the leaves are processed). By contrast, when we talk about herbal infusions or herbal teas we typically refer to other fresh or dried plant materials steeped in hot water (e.g. lemon verbena, lemon grass, peppermint, ginger, hibiscus etc).

For the purposes of today’s post this distinction between teas and herbal infusions does not really matter since teas and herbal infusions can be used in much the same ways when it comes to flavouring desserts and baked goods. Which tea or herbal infusion to use will simply depend on what flavour or flavour combination you are after.

How can I use teas and herbal infusions to flavour my desserts and baked goods?

You can use teas and herbal infusions to flavour really any and all element(s) of your baked goods or desserts. For example, when it comes to a frosted layer cake:

You could add tea or a herbal infusion to the sponge itself (e.g. by adding the dried tea leaves or herbal infusion directly to the dry ingredients, whole or in powder form, or infused into the butter or milk or other fat or liquid ingredient called for in the recipe);
A tea or herbal infusion flavoured simple syrup is also a great way to moisten cake layers before assembling the cake;
Fresh or dried fruit steeped or poached in your tea or herbal infusion is a delicious way to add a fruit component of your layer cake; and
You could also flavour the buttercream you will use to frost your layer cake with your tea or a herbal infusion.

Now, I am not saying you necessarily need to make say a layer cake consisting of an Earl Grey sponge, with an Early Grey soaking syrup, an Earl Grey buttercream and an Early Grey citrus compote filling, but you certainly could.

Beyond layer cake components you could also flavour pastry cream with a tea or herbal infusion to use as a filling for doughnuts for example, you could also make a simple icing with tea or a herbal infusion to top a loaf cake with and you could even make a tea or herbal infusion flavoured sugar (e.g. to roll churros in). Similar to making making vanilla sugar you simply need to add some tea or herbal infusion to a jar of sugar and after a few weeks you should have wonderfully aromatic sugar. And you are probably already familiar with using a tea or herbal infusion to steep dried fruit in before adding to an enriched dough (e.g. for hot cross buns or similar).

In short, you can use teas and herbal infusions to flavour the building blocks of your desserts like cake or cookies for example, as well as flavour any fillings or garnishes.

Chamomile Financiers with Chamomile Poached Pears and Creme Anglaise

Tips for baking with tea and making desserts with tea

Choosing which tea or herbal infusion to use:
- There are two ways of approaching this - either you start by wanting to make a recipe with a given tea or herbal infusion that you like a lot and go from there or you decide what you want to make first and then choose whichever tea or herbal infusion to use. Whichever way you approach it, you want to look for similar or complementary flavours.
- For some recipes flavour pairing matters of course somewhat less or not at all. E.g. you could flavour a panna cotta with pretty much any tea or herbal infusion and serve that as your dessert, maybe with some plain shortbread crumbs for some extra texture. Same for say a tea or herbal influsion flavoured pastry cream you want to use to fill doughnuts with.
- As soon as you have more than one element of your baked good or dessert having a distinct flavour (in the panna cotta example maybe you want to serve a fruit compote alongside the panna cotta), you want to look for similar or complementary flavours. I have shared some suggested pairings below but you should of course feel free to experiment a bit to see what combinations work for you.
How much tea or herbal infusion should I use for a given recipe?
- Teas and herbal infusions can be delicate in flavour (although there are exceptions - Lapsang Souchong being a case in point) so there can be a temptation to let the tea or herbal infusion steep extra long when making an infusion to use in a recipe. But try and resist that temptation - letting tea or a herbal infusion steep for too long risks the infusion becoming bitter. Instead, if you are looking for a stronger flavour, simply use more of your tea or herbal infusion but steep for the recommended amount of time.
- Beyond that, it is hard to give even ballpark figures for how much tea or herbal infusion to use. What I typically try to do is look up a few recipes similar to the one I want to make and that use the same tea or herbal infusion I want to use. Once I have seen a few recipes that will give me a ballpark figure of how much to use and I can experiment (and adjust) from there.
How should I incorporate the tea or herbal infusion into my recipe?
- This of course depends on what you are making but my rule of thumb is (i) use an infusion for things like panna cotta, pastry cream (and its many variants), ice cream, mousses, flavoured whipped cream, ganache (simply infuse the cream part with your chosen tea or herbal infusion); (ii) use a powdered tea or herbal infusion (an electric spice grinder will come in handy here) to mix in with the dry ingredients for cake and mini cakes like financiers, madeleines etc and (iii) use whole teas or herbal infusions when making shortbread for the added textural element.

Smokey Banana Bread with Lapsang Souchong

Suggested Pairings

The below is by no means exhaustive but I thought I would share a few pairings for some common (and some not so common) teas and herbal infusions:

Earl Grey: goes well with chocolate, but unsurprisingly also citrus fruits (for example, imagine an Earl Grey flavoured panna cotta with a kumquat compote!). I also once had a delicious dessert in Washington D.C. that paired blueberries with Earl Grey - unexpectedly delicious;
Chamomile: works well with pears or strawberries and is also often paired with honey. See for example Nicola Lamb’s Mimosa Tarts which feature a honey chamomile cream filling or the Chamomile Financiers with Chamomile Poached Pears I shared here on Substack just a few weeks ago;
Jasmine: goes well with berries like in the fruit salad recipe I share below, but also other fruits like stone fruits and melons;
Hibiscus: has something berry-like in terms of flavour and unsurprisingly pairs well with dark red fruits like cherries or cranberry, but also citrus fruits like lemon, lime or orange. Having had to find a replacement for my beloved Glühwein during my pregnancy and playing around with a mulled Hibiscus concoction, I learned that Hibiscus also works well with warming spices like cinnamon and cloves;
Hojicha: pairs wonderfully with white chocolate, caramel, coffee, banana, and different kinds of nuts. See also the recipe for Hojicha Madeleines I shared here on Substack a few months ago;
Lapsang Souchong: one of the few teas that is anything but delicate in flavour Lapsang Souchong happily pairs with other strong flavours like dark chocolate or prunes but it also lends an interesting and almost savoury note to this Smokey Banana Bread of mine;
Masala Chai: pairs well with milky flavours and white chocolate (e.g. in a ganache) but would also work with autumn fruits like pears or plums for example. E.g. I can imagine David Leite’s Masala Chai Creme Brulee would be lovely with some Masala Chai poached pears on the side;
Matcha: goes well with coconut, white chocolate but also green apple;
Osmanthus: a tea with a delicate peachy note it works well with stone fruits like peaches, nectarines, apricots or plums;
Soba-Cha: this tea made from roasted buckwheat groats once steeped in milk or cream gives off serious cereal milk vibes and can be made into delicious toasted buckwheat ice cream.

May Round-Up

May was an unusually busy month travel-wise for us - it started out with a longer trip to visit my in-laws in Bucharest for Orthodox Easter at the start of May, there was a long weekend in London and we ended the month with a short trip to Germany for my dad’s birthday. And as I like to ensure when I travel, there was a lot of good eating (but slightly less cooking and baking than usual due to limited time in my own kitchen).

Eating

I feel like we made the most of our first trip back to Romania since January and ate our fair share of our favourite delicious Romanian dishes - including Sarmale (rice and minced meat stuffed fermented cabbage rolls), Mici (beautifull soft sausages of sorts), Papanasi (Romanian sour cream doughnuts served with more sourcream and fruit compote), Cozonac (a Romanian celebration bread made with Brioche and stuffed with a walnut and cocoa paste as well as chunks of Rose flavoured Turkish delight) etc.

Our trip to London was very much focussed on catching up with friends and their little ones but we did manage to grab some delicious pastries from Fortitude Bakehouse one morning and also eat our way through Chestnut Bakery’s stunning pastry offering one afternoon. And in Germany we managed to truly stuff ourselves, starting with a family dinner to celebrate my dad’s birthday that involved Ottolenghi’s roasted aubergines on a whipped feta cream and a spicy harissa sauce as a starter, an enormous pan of seafood paella as our main course and a slice of strawberry bagatelle made to Lenôtre’s recipe and a scoop of Ottolenghi’s pineapple and basil sorbet with a drizzle of olive oil.

Back in Brussels I was excited to discover that fig leaf season has officially started and that Goods Bakery is once again offering their beautifully delicious and deeply green fig leaf frangipane stuffed almond croissants.

Reading

Alicia Kennedy just kicked off a new series on her Substack with short interviews with fellow food writers on how they eat and shop for food where they live and as someone who is both very nosey but also very into food this was a great discovery and I cannot wait for the next instalment. Speaking of nosey, I also really enjoy Bon Appetit’s series The Receipt - it is a bit like the Refinery’s Money Diaries series, but for nosey foodies.

Baking / Cooking

Since we spent more time abroad in May than at home, there was only limited time spent in my own kitchen. But I did find the time for multiple rounds of testing a new scone recipe I am working on and which I will hopefully share here on Substack soon.

Drinking

Despite little time in my own kitchen I did manage to squeeze in a few homemade drinks though. While temperatures were briefly in the mid-20s I made this summer’s first batch of Hibiscus Agua Fresca. I also managed to make one batch of Tepache before the temperatures dipped again. And last week I made my first batch of forest green Tarragon simple syrup for Georgian-style Tarragon lemonade. An acquired taste if fennel is not your thing (as is the case for my husband) but a delicious and unusual lemonade if you are already a convert to all things fennel, anise and licorice (which I definitely am)!

What have you been reading / eating / drinking / cooking or baking lately that you enjoyed?

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