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!

Green Tea Cranberry Spritzer

Sparkling tea!

It's Christmas time and I have been so busy with the shop that I have been making recipes but not posting them! I recently got a bag of cranberries from my CSA and have been brainstorming about what to do with them. 

I'm a huge fan of cranberries in drinks so I started to look at what I had in the house. I try to make my recipes with simple ingredients so that you can make them with things you probably have already instead of going out to buy a bunch of items. 

I had cranberries, seltzer water and some clementines! The last thing I needed was to choose a type of tea. I wanted to chose something that embodies the christmas spirit. Lucky for me The Tea Spot generously sent me some of their lovely teas and one of them is a roasted green tea with peppermint! You can find it here  ! Peppermint is a classic christmas time flavor and with the addition of cranberries and citrus, it's perfect!

Once you brew the tea let it cool and then let it cool all the way by putting it in the refrigerator! Once the tea is cool you can use it in the drink! 

Seltzer always gives drinks a nice fizzy kick! If you are a cranberry lover I would suggest crushing up a few cranberries to add to the drink.

I filled my cup up about 1/2 way with tea and 1/2 with seltzer but feel free to change these porpotions to however you think the drink will taste best!

I mention in the recipe about adding some juice of the orange. I had a clementine on hand and squeezed half of one in each cup. You can add more or less based on your taste!

Orange + Cranberries + Green tea peppermint + Seltzer water = AMAZING!! If you want this boozy, I think this simple combo would taste delicious with a variety of drinks!

Blood Orange Smoothie Madeleines

New and improved! 

A while ago I saw a recipe for madeleines from one of my favorite food bloggers, A cozy Kitchen. I worked from this recipe to create madeleines that were tea infused but they were a bit of a mess, especially since I didn't have the proper pan!

I received some blood orange smoothie tea from The Tea Spot in my recent Sipsby box and knew that was the best tea to use! This blend has red rooibos tea, orange peel, hibiscus, rosehips, safflowers, rose petals, natural orange & vanilla flavors. 

In A Cozy Kitchen's recipe she uses "browned butter" which you can read a bit more about in her post. Instead, I used the normal infusing method of melting the butter and throwing the tea in here. You want to add the melted butter to your batter before it congeals!

One of the tweaks I made was to add the zest of lemon to the recipe as well. I think lemon paired well with the other ingredients like rosehip and hibiscous. 

You do want to let the batter cool slightly before putting it into a piping bag! If you use a bag that's fine but you can also just use a ziploc bag with the tip cut off. This makes it easier to fill the molds on the pan. One lesson I learned: even if you have a non stick pan, use either butter or flour or both on the pan before putting the batter in. 

My pan was non stick but it was a bit difficult to get the madeleines out without breaking them! 

I was really excited about how they turned out! Nice and plump! Remember to touch the madeleines to see if they spring back a bit. You do want them to get a bit golden but not too much so you don't burn the bottoms! 

It's my personal opionion that these taste best warm!

Glaze is totally optional but I wanted to try it and it helped cover up some patches from some of the madeleines I butchered :) I made an orange glaze by simply mixing fresh orange juice and confectioner's sugar! 

OMG. SO. GOOD. If you don't like orange, stay awayyyy! My mom actually called me to tell me how good these were. 

100% will be making again!