Have you seen the Cornelia Bean Instagram lately?! Big things are happening over at @corneliabean, including amazing giveaways, tea features and event announcements. Give us a follow and don’t miss out on all of the exciting things happening at 417 Academy Road.
The Cornelia Bean family obviously adores tea but did you know that we also all have serious sweet tooths?! What better way to combine these two loves than to start baking with tea! And we’ve decided to use the extra chilly winter from Mother Nature as an opportunity to turn the oven on and get baking. We’ve recently tried the Pumpkin Cupcakes with Chai Cream Cheese Frosting from Big Girls Small Kitchen and the Earl Grey Sugar Cookies from the Sweet & Simple Kitchen using Cornelia Bean tea and they were major successes!
Both recipes were made first with our loose leaf teas and then a second time with tea bags (ahhh shocking I know…). And there was NO comparison - the loose leaf tea versions were by far the winners! Loose leaf tea is fresher and gives you the whole leaf to extract flavour from, a critical step when you’re infusing foods with flavour. Baking with tea means you can also sip a cup of tea while baking, frosting, eating and serving!
For the Earl Grey sugar cookies, we used our traditional Earl Grey, but you could also use Earl Grey Blue Flower, Earl Grey Lavender, Lady Grey or Earl Grey Russian.
Same with the chai cream cheese frosting - we used our traditional Masala Chai, but we have chais in every tea variety so you could also experiment with any of our other chai varieties.
We couldn’t ignore our coffee lovers though! And for most people who are big fans of drinking a whole cup of coffee, coffee-infused baking is always a big hit. We found these Chocolate Espresso sugar cookies from the Sweet & Simple Kitchen that are rich and light and so delicious.
The recipe calls for grocery store espresso powder. But stop right there! This dust-like powder can be easily upgraded by using a generous tablespoon of any of our espresso or dark roast coffees. I didn’t even grind it down to an espresso grind but used a coarser grind that I drink and it gave the cookies a satisfying texture and even deeper coffee flavour.
In upcoming blog posts, when Winnipeg is out of this polar vortex with no need for turning on ovens, we will feature more recipes calling for tea and coffee that are perfect for summer BBQs and the lake. In the meantime, keep checking out our Instagram and the blog for more information on brewing tea and coffee, recipes, tea and coffee features and other exciting news!