Tea and Crumpets? Kinda...

Crumpets are a griddle cake that pretty much look like an English Muffin and are mainly eaten in the United Kingdom with tea. Well around these parts, I bake cookies with my tea.

Let's start with the tea. Chai tea has always been my favorite, especially the chai tea lattes at Starbucks. Chai is a black spiced tea from india and the word Chai simply means 'tea' in Hindu. There are strong notes of cinnamon and cloves that stand out but also cardamom and ginger.

I wanted to play off the cloves and cinnamon aspect of the chai. I've made chai frosting before with pumpkin bars but that's a whole new ballgame that we'll get to come fall. I've ironically not been much of a fan of cinnamon but I do enjoy cinnamon sugar so I wanted to incorporate that into the cookie but not too much to where it would take away from the spiced chai flavor.

So I turned to the snickerdoodle. I haven't experimented with the snickerdoodle much but I'm glad I did. The dough is stickier and more doughy than normal cookie dough which gives it a little flakiness. I rolled the dough into balls, rolled it into some cinnamon sugar and baked about 10-12 minutes at 350.

While they were baking I made a chai glaze. It's easier than it sounds. All I used was powdered sugar, water, ground cinnamon and ground cloves. I combined everything with a whisk until I reached a taste and consistency that I wanted and dunked the cookies in. The advantage to the square shape is that it sinks a little in the middle and holds onto more of the glaze that hardens in the fridge after awhile.

I dont mean to toot my own horn but I continue to impress myself and definitely see myself making these in the future. Tea party or not.

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Tea time!

Enough with the coffee for a little bit and on to full-leaf tea. I've never baked with tea before and thought I'd give it a shot. Coffee's easy to bake with, it will pretty much be good in anything, but tea is a whole different animal and it's hard to tell whether it's going to be good as a cake or if you should just let it be tea.

Still debating this idea with Blueberry White Tea.

I started with a basic pound cake recipe (lots of butter, lots of eggs) and used full-leaf tea. Normally people will steep tea bags in milk and add it but I found that the full leaf tea really works. You can't just have tea leaves buried in your cake though so you have to find a way to infuse it into a liquid you'll use in the cake. Milk could work but you risk curdling the milk if you leave it on for too long. In this case, I melted the butter and the let the tea leaves steep there. Take it off the flame when the butter melts and let it sit like you would tea (normally about four minutes). Let it sit a little longer because you don't want to pour hot butter into your cake batter.

Strain the butter with a tea press or a tea strainer when it's cool enough.

You can definitely taste the tea in the cake but I'm starting to second-guess my tea choice for the cake. It could have even been the poundcake recipe I used, not one of the best. On the other hand, the home-made icing is perfect, and makes them look great too. Amazing what butter, powdered sugar and milk can do.