All You Need To Know About Baking With Tea

April 7, 2022

Tea is a beverage that is enjoyed by people all over the world and tea parties have, for centuries, been pairing everything from scones to specialty breads, cookies, and pastries with a good cuppa. But have you ever tried infusing tea into bakes itself? 

We’re officially hooked onto baking with tea, and we’re not talking about the usual Matcha cheesecake, or Earl Grey chiffon cake. We’re craving baked goods with our signature teas, say Osmanthus Oolong, Pearl of the Orient and more – it’s amazing how tea-infused bake recipes excites your palate. 

You can make wonders with just a single tea, be it using it in cookies, scones, breads, cupcakes, tarts or full sized cakes! Adding tea to the equation simply makes all of our favourite sweet treats even better… But you may wonder, how can I do that? Well, here’s all you need to know about baking with teas:

As with any other ingredients that go into the recipe, it’s important to use premium quality tea that is properly stored for maximum freshness and taste. Tea that isn’t properly stored or too old can tend to result in a flavourless bake or bitter aftertaste.

Similar to the traditional way of consuming tea, you can steep your teas in hot water according to the steeping suggestion for the specific teas or try cold brewing them to extract the full flavour of the tea while minimising the tannins that often accompanies teas that have been oversteeped in hot water. To cold brew teas, simply steep the tea bags overnight in water in the refrigerator (for around 8 to 12 hours) before use.

Depending on what you’re baking or making, finely ground teas can bring out a vibrant tea flavour in frostings or cookies. Grinding down tea leaves and using it in the batter, dough, or frosting directly is another method of infusion but do take note how “fine” you’re grinding down the teas – the best would be to pound or grind the teas down into a fine dust that you can sprinkle into your baking mix, so that it will not alter the texture of the bake or make it too gritty in terms of mouthfeel.

If you’re working with larger tea leaves, you can consider to bring out the tea flavour by steeping the tea in melted, unsalted butter for 4 to 5 minutes before straining it. That way you’ll get a nice tea-infused butter (that pairs perfectly with freshly baked plain bread by the way)!

The idea is similar to infusing tea in butter – you can steep the tea leaves in warm milk for 5 minutes, or steep them in cold milk overnight. We’d recommend using this method for frostings or creams, especially for recipes that don’t require the use of butter. It’s also fun to explore around and naturally colour your baked goods and frostings with the colour of the steeped tea!

We love a good experiment and the fact that using teas in baking or cooking can open the door to countless delightful combinations of flavours or ideas! From tea jellies to tiramisu, or even brownies and cheesecake, we’ve incorporated teas into our bakes to give our afternoon tea sesh a little “oomph”! For our list of recipes, including tea mocktails and cocktails recipes, do check them out here and share your tea-infused bakes with us by tagging us on social media or hashtagging #AtHomeWithGryphon! We’d love to see your creations and exchange pointers!

Love, LX