White Tea Apple Crumble

Crumble? Cobbler? Crisp? What’s the difference? Honestly, I don’t know. Even after looking them all up several times I see people refer to different things, different ways. That’s ok.

I’m naming this dish a crumble because to me, it’s a little crumbly just how I like it :)

This is another super simple recipe. While I will do some more in depth recipes too, to keep me on my one blog post a week routine, I need to keep things simple most of the time. The benefit of this is that I can figure out how to use ingredients I have on hand to create yummy things and share that with you too!

So today’s quick recipe, you need:

-Apples

-Butter

-Rolled oats

-Flour

-Baking soda (optional)

-Lemon

-Brown Sugar

-White tea

I used 4 apples for this crumble, they were two different kinds that I got in my weekly product box. In terms of prep, I would suggest slicing them relatively thinly so baking is quicker and cut out seeds etc. Some people peel the apples but I personally love the skin so I leave it on! Feel free to peel them if you’d like!

Tea comes into this recipe at the very start! I brewed up some white tea and soaked the apple for 2-3 hours in the tea! I brewed some Columbian white tea very strong and let it cool slightly before I put the apple in because I didn’t want them to soften too much.

After about 3 hours, they looks like this, tinted with the white tea (compare to above photos) and they had a lovely white tea fragrance and taste. The reason I brewed the white tea strongly is that this is a very subtle taste and I wanted the apples to get as much flavor as possible from the tea!

This dish that I’m using is actually a quiche dish but I like the taller edges so I always use it for pies and other things besides quiche. I also added in a handful of blueberries and blackberries to this for a little variety. Feel free to add your favorite fruits!

For the inside, I sprinkled about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, the juice of 1 lemon and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. I usually use 1/3 a lemon but the lemon I had wasn’t very juicy so I used the whole one. I love tart so the more lemon the better but lessen this if you don’t want it as tart. As for the baking powder, I have made this without it and it was fine.

The topping is very simple also. I leave the rolled oats whole because I like the texture but if you want it less crunchy you can put them in a food processor and pulse a few times. I melted 2 tablespoons of butter and mixed it into 1 cup of rolled oats. I then sprinkled some flour over the oats, just a little like a teaspoon to a tablespoon. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit as evenly as you can and place in the oven!

I baked this at 350 for about 50 minutes. I did 30 minutes then checked on it and did 2 intervals of 10 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, I cute up some small cubes of butter and placed them over the topping to add a little golden brown buttery goodness. Let it cool slightly so you don’t burn your mouth and voila!

A simply crumble for you. The topping isn’t stuck together that much which is how I like it but if you would like it to stick together more I would increase the flour and butter when preparing the topping.

I could see this being pretty good with hojicha or roasted oolong apples as well!

I hope you enjoy tea soaked apple crumble :)

Pomegranate Ginger White Tea Mocktail

I’m so glad I’ve been able to stick to my new blog post every sunday for 3 weeks in a row! I’ve been thinking about fall because it’s been chilly for a week or so here. What do you think of when you hear the word fall? Pumpkins? Apples? Pears? For me, all of those but also pomegranates! They have been one of my favorite fruits since I was a kid and I enjoy them any time but in the colder months especially.

I get a weekly produce box called Imperfect Box that is trying to fight food waste. The box uses Imperfect produce and excess inventory on lots of items that would otherwise get thrown away. It’s especially cool because someone I went to high school with started this business! If you click the link above you can check it out and if you sign up through my referral link you’ll get $10 towards your first order. I’ve found this to be super convenient especially during the pandemic to get some essentials delivered to me. Please note that if you sign up through my referral code, I am also awarded $ towards my purchases.

Back to pomegranates, I had that as an option to me and was so excited to receive them in my imperfect box this past Tuesday. Using pomegranates as my base, I looked at my tea to see what would go well. I debated between an oolong and white tea and finally landed on a white tea. Next, to make this mocktail more interesting, I purchased some spicy ginger beer to add some sweet and spice!

This is basically the entire recipe but I wanted to share a few notes about it. For the pomegranates, I made a juice. For these two glasses I made juice from one pomegranate. After seeding the pomegranate, I put the seeds in a food processor, the pulp is almost purple! Then take the pulp and juice and strain it. I wanted a little pulp in mine so I wiped the strainer back and forth to get some of the pulp in the juice. This still keeps out the larger pieces.

If you’ve never seeded a pomegranate, here is a video showing you how I was taught to do it.

For the tea, you can cold or hot brew it. Due to timing, I brewed mine hot then ran it through a press brew that had ice to cool it down to make the process quicker. I would suggest adding a little bit of extra tea so the brew is stronger and will come through with the other flavors.

A note about the ginger beer. I only used ginger beer but I think to make it less sweet you could always change the proportions and do something like 1/2 the glass with tea then fill the rest with a combo of pomegranate juice, ginger beer and a plain seltzer.

This was made to be a mocktail but I took some of it and added a bit of whiskey to enjoy so it can easily be turned into a cocktail if you’d like that too!

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!

Sage Rose White Rolled Ice Cream

Rose Roll Up. 

I had a familiar friend on the menu recently, Sage Rose White from Wight Tea Co! I used this tea in a post a while ago. This tea is so nice because it's light and floral thanks to the white tea and rose, it also has such a wonderful fragrance!

I know and love Wight Tea Co so much and was super excited that they are now a brand partner with Sipsby!  I mean, check out this tea. It is BEAUTIFUL! P.s. You can use code teathoughts to get 50% your first box! 

This tea is also delicate, so make sure to not over brew it. I have in my instructions to let it sit in the heated milk and cream for 2 minutes. Usually when I cook with teas, I like to increase the brewing time to make sure that the flavor or the tea can withstand any cooking but there is no cooking required in this recipe.   

A while ago I saw a bunch of videos of "rolled ice cream." The ice cream masters (this is my nickname for them) would mix your flavors of ice cream with whatever toppings on a freezing cold flat surface then spread the ice cream very thin and shave it off with what looks like a paint scraper. Of course, I thought that 1) I wanted that ice cream and 2) I bet I can remake it! 

From what I've seen this is a traditional Thai dessert so I did some research to see if the ice cream was made a certain way. I saw a bunch of diy recipes and they all seemed to look like regular ice cream ingredients so I followed suit. 

Next, I decided on salted pistachios. It took me a LONG time to decide on what to incorporate into this ice cream. The tea already has such a wonderful flavor and I didn't want to put something like cookies or chocolate into it and overpower the tea. I had some salted pistachios at home and my Persian roots decided that pistachios and rose make a lovely combo.

I've had salted caramel and also butter pecan which can sometimes have a slight salt flavor from the pecans and I love those both. I thought, why not the same thing with pistachios?! 

When you look at the recipe below you'll see that it's very simple but the rolling part was a challenge for me! I used a regular spatula but next time I want to go out and get something very thin like a paint scraper. If you look at the "roll" on the left, that was my first attempt and the one on the right is my second which came out much better! Some advice about rolling: Be confident in your roll and don't do it too slow because I think that gives the ice cream time to break. 

This is definitely an eat immediately dessert! I wanted to give a few notes about the Almond milk and cream. I used almond milk because it's what I had and wanted to test it out but the cream definitely is the main flavor. This was very creamy and delicious which I love but I think it's totally possible to substitute the cream with coconut milk to get the same consistency but with less cream and no dairy!  

In most cases I've seen the rolls topped with other ingredients like sprinkles, hot fudge etc but I decided to keep this plain and the salted pistachios are DIVINE! What flavors would you like to get on your rolled ice cream?!