Hojicha Truffles

Have you ever tried hojicha? It is a delightful roasted green tea and while I love to drink it, I’ve always thought the flavor would make a great addition to sweets!

Hojicha has such a rich flavor I thought that truffles would make a great combo. Instead of infusing the tea into the truffles I decided to make powder of it.

I used the hojicha gold powder from Hojicha Co. but they also sell a powder if you’d like to skip the crushing!

I crushed the hojicha and walnuts with a mortar and pestle and then mixed it with the chopped chocolate!

Truffles are so easy to make, all you need to do is heat the heavy cream and pour them over the chocolate. After letting the chocolate and heavy cream sit for a few minutes, mix well and refrigerate for several hours until solid.

Once the truffles are solidified, take a tablespoon or whatever size you want your truffles and round them out. You can roll the truffles in whatever topping you’d like. I chose coconut! I thought that coconut and the nutty flavor of the hojicha + walnut flavor would go well together.

These truffles are so rich and delicious!

Make sure to use a real chocolate bar instead of chocolate chips. It is so much easier to get smooth truffles this way!

A fair warning, if you do use nuts these will have a little bit of crunch :)

Long Jing Quinoa

Hey There! I’m finally back with another recipe and I thought that it was time to do something savory! I’ve done tea infused rice before so why not try quinoa!

I bought this red quinoa loose from safeway. They have a nice section where you can fill up a paper bag and the cost is by weight. I like how I can just recycle the bag afterwards, no plastic packaging! I want to start off by saying, I’m Persian so rice is like a love language to me but every once in a while I’ll have quinoa.

I had been making my way through some long jing that I got for my birthday and was towards the end of it so I decided to use that. I think this could go well an oolong, hojicha or something like genmaicha or gyokuro as well.

I didn’t have directions for this quinoa so I followed the general rule of doubling the amount of quinoa for how much water to use. Quinoa expands 3 times so 1 cup will make plenty !

The recipe is simply one cup quinoa to two cups water. Instead of using plain water I brewed two cups long jing and used that to cook the quinoa so that it would have a delicious green tea flavor!

Prepare your two cups of tea, I used this pot because it is so handy! Again, feel free to change up the tea to some of the suggestions mentioned above. Place the 1 cup quinoa and 2 cups tea in a pot. I added a bit of salt, pepper and liquid saffron as well.

With the lid off, bring the pot to a boil. Once boiling, cover and lower the heat and let the quinoa cook until the water has been absorbed (10-20 minutes). Once all the water is absorbed, turn off the pot and let the pot sit with the lid on for another 10 minutes then fluff the quinoa with a fork!

The result is a nicely flavored quinoa with a touch of green tea! The long jing gives the quinoa a bit of it’s roasted nutty flavor !

Voila!

Tea Infused Kringle Hearts

Hello!

Small Announcement: I’ve missed you all! I have to admit some sad circumstances have stopped my blogging for most of December and all of January. In December, my stepdad passed away suddenly and it affected me more than I could ever have imagined. I wanted to keep going everyday which I did to a certain point but creating recipes and blogging is such an involved process and I wasn’t up for it. I appreciate your patience during my little break and I’m back in time for the holiday of love!

I have mixed feeling about valentine’s day but I always try to be positive about it AND it’s an excuse to bake and cook things with hearts!

Have you ever tried Kringle?? I bought one from trader joe’s around the holidays and OMG SO GOOD! After I bought that one I couldn’t find them again :( I found out that you can order them online but they are a little pricey.

I was sure I could find a recipe on the internet, and I did! I used this recipe for these kringle hearts and will let you know the changes I made and how I added tea!

For those of you know kringle, you’re probably thinking that this isn’t the right shape! Well, you’re correct. I actually created the kringle then used a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut these out. It was messy but worth it for valentines day! The heart shape doesn’t change the taste in anyway :D

You can find the recipe I followed here !

If I am following a recipe and want to infuse tea into it, I will look for either a liquid portion to infuse or butter! In the past I have tried to use tea in place of the warm water for the yeast and for whatever reason they have always failed! This may have nothing to do with tea but to be safe I used the milk in this recipe.

The recipe calls for warm milk and so I heated the milk a bit and put 2 tablespoons of tea in the milk. I let it steep for until fragrant and when the milk was warm and not hot then I strained it and included it in the recipe.

Two notes about this, use more milk for the infusion that the recipe calls for and measure the final amount added to the recipe. You will lose some milk when you heat it and strain it. You can add less or more tea depending on how strong you want the tea flavor!

This recipe will not give you the thin kringle that you’re probably used to but it is still delicious. The filling is very sweet and is most of the flavor for this recipe. The topping which is a simple glaze makes this a great sweet treat!

A note about choosing a tea for this recipe. I would suggest choosing a black tea and if you are choosing a blended black to tea remember that the flavor you choose will be subtle in the bread part of this so make sure it is a blend you like!

For example, the tea I used in the blend was Amaretto Spice from The Jasmine Pearl Tea. This tea is a blend of black tea, cinnamon and amaretto flavoring. This combo was ideal because you have the extra cinnamon and almond flavor from the amaretto but nothing too overwhelming!

These turned out really delicious and although they aren’t exactly like the original Kringle they have that lovely flavor!

You can definitely create the shapes listed in the recipe but I will say that although the cookie cutter shape was a bit difficult to cut out since I did it after it was baked, it was nice to just give out heart shaped pieces!

I didn’t decide to do the hearts until after it was baked but I think you could probably cut them out before baking and have it turn out well too!