Afternoon Meditative Ginger Tonic

Mocktail!

I love making tea cocktails but I also realize that not everyone drinks alcohol. I also realize that even if you do drink alcohol, sometimes it's nice to have a fancy drink. I received some meditative mind tea in my sipsby box this month and oh man, this is some of my favorite tea! 

The combination of white tea, jasmine tea and rose buds and petals creates a lovely blend. The tea smells beautiful and has an all around calming nature. I decided that this would definitely make a great afternoon tonic but it needed a few things!

I added ginger because I thought it would go well with all the ingredients and give it a little spice to help energize you. I also added a bit of honey to make is slightly sweet as you'd expect a fancy drink to be! The drink will be topped off with seltzer water to add some fun fizz to the experience! Finally, I added an orange peel garnish for fun but you can also dunk the peel in the drink and give it a little orange flavor as well!

Honey is totally optional and feel free to use whatever type of sweetener you'd like to suit your tastes!

I have this fun glass tea pot that I brewed all the ingredients in together so that they could mix well. You could use a tea pot of any type of bowl that can widthstand heat!

This tea doesn't need to brew for more than 2-3 minutes. Feel free to let it brew a little longer for the ingredients to mix but not too much longer because the longer you brew the more bitter the tea may become. I did ginger slices but I think grating the ginger may give the drink even more of a kick! 

After you strain the tea, make sure you let the tea cool before adding it to your glasses!

I filled my glasses about 3/4 of the way with tea and then the rest with seltzer water and added a garnish on top!

Bangkok Popsicles

Bang! 

May's Sips by box has some delicious tea in it! It's been super hot since I got home from my trip to Italy and I thought that tea popsicles were the perfect solution! The Bangkok tea blend from Harney & Son's that was in my box has green tea, coconut, ginger and vanilla. Um.....can you say YUM or what?! These are all light, summer time flavors in my opinion that would go perfect as a popsicle. 

Part of me wanted to just brew this tea, let it cool and then freeze them because it has so many wonderful flavors. BUT, I decided that I needed to add one ingredient to spice things up.   

I chose cardamom because it's not only fragrant but also very flavorful. I used to eat these sugar candies that had whole cardamom seeds in them and they were one of my favorite things to have with tea! Even though cardamom is potent I think it goes well with a lot of different flavors. 

I've seen so many posts about ice cream that have fancy styled shots and I was on the hunt for popsicle sticks and metal molds. My local grocery store didn't have what I was looking for but something even better! These colorful popsicle molds are so cute AND do you see that straw? You can sip the melting popsicle so it doesn't run into your hand, it's awesome!

I let my tea brew for a bit longer than I said in the recipe and they were quite potent but I liked them. I wanted to make sure that they got a nice color because splitting the tea between all these mold would certainly weaken the flavor. 

These are great ice pops, they have a wonderful flavor and aren't heavy. The only thing I didn't like which I'll have to find a solution for is that the bottom of the mold and what turned out to be the top of the popsicle were much more flavorful than the rest of the popsicle. 

I've been enjoying these the past few nights and really like how light and refreshing they are. I didn't use very much honey but they still have sweetness to them to make them feel like dessert. 

Watch out for another ice cream/popsicle recipe coming very soon! Do you have a favorite tea pop?!