I bring home leftovers from what we cooked in the test kitchen that day (that is, anything that wasn’t gobbled up by our in-house tasters) or any groceries that would otherwise go bad. And, in general, I can’t turn off my brain when it comes to food. So I’m always “working”, jotting down recipe ideas for the test kitchen that I find when perusing my favorite food blogs or leafing through the pages of my cookbook collection. I even have a test kitchen “notes” file on my phone so I can write down ideas on the go.

Recently in the test kitchen, we’ve been working on creative simple syrup recipes. These are homemade syrups we flavor with different spices and then feature in other food and drink recipes. I’ve probably tested about 50 recipes in the last few weeks to end up with about 20 that we will publish.

Inspired by this creative syrup making, and using some leftover test kitchen groceries, I ended up making a fruity tea syrup at home—made with a hibiscus tea blend and blackberries—to put atop a lovely and easy cream cheese pound cake adapted from Epicurious.com.

For the tea, I used DAVIDsTEA’s Paradise Found, a fruity black tea blend with tart hibiscus and sweet mango that pairs perfectly with berries. The bright red hibiscus adds to the stunning color of the syrup, too. The syrup is super simple to make and can be spooned over crepes, pancakes and ice cream, or used to flavor cocktails, lemonade or iced tea.

The pound cake is a bit of a project because it starts in a cold oven and you increase the oven temperature several times as it spends a long time cooking low and slow. But it’s totally worth it. It’s perfectly dense and moist on the inside and beautifully browned and crusty on the outside. I’ve never had a pound cake turn out with this wonderful of a texture.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Blackberry Tea Syrup

(Pound cake adapted from the Cream Cheese Pound Cake recipe on Epicurious.com. Syrup recipe by Zanitea. )

Makes 1 large pound cake and 2 cups syrup

Ingredients:

For the pound cake:

1 cup (2 sticks), plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

8 oz. package cream cheese

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

6 large eggs

4 teaspoons almond extract

grated zest of 1 large orange

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus 2 tablespoons unsifted flour

For the syrup:

juice of 1 large orange, plus enough water to equal 2 cups liquid

2 cups sugar

1 pint blackberries, fresh or frozen

¼ cup loose leaf flavored tea (I used DAVIDsTEA’s Paradise Found)

2 teaspoons rose water, optional

Preparation:

For the pound cake:

1. Bring the 2 sticks of butter, cream cheese and eggs to room temperature. Butter and flour a large Bundt pan with the 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons unsifted flour.

2. Beat butter and cream cheese together in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add sugar and salt, and beat for 10 minutes, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Beat in almond extract and orange zest. Add flour 1 cup at a time and mix on low speed until flour is incorporated and batter is smooth; do not overmix. Transfer batter to the prepared Bundt pan.

3. Place Bundt pan in cold oven. Set temperature at 200 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. Increase temperature to 250 degrees and bake for 20 more minutes. Increase temperature to 275 degrees and bake for 10 more minutes. Increase temperature to 300 degrees and bake until tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let the cake rest in the pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. Turn the cake out onto the rack and let it cool completely. The cake can be stored at room temperature for a few days if it’s wrapped well.

For the syrup:

1. Whisk together the sugar and 2 cups orange juice/water mixture in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes.

2. Remove syrup base from heat, add blackberries and tea leaves, cover, and steep for 5 minutes. Remove cover, mash berries with a potato masher or wooden spoon, then cover again, and steep for 5 more minutes. Strain berries and tea through a fine sieve, return liquid to a clean saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in rose water, and allow mixture to cool to room temperature. Store syrup in a sealed container in the refrigerator for a week or so.

Tips:

• You can use vanilla extract instead of almond extract in the cake; the almond and orange are just really yummy together. Or experiment with other flavors, like lemon extract and lemon zest or coconut extract and shredded coconut.
• You can substitute raspberries, strawberries or blueberries for the blackberries, or use a mix of berries.
• Any tea would work for the syrup. I like a blend with hibiscus for the bright red color and tang the hibiscus adds to the syrup.

So I attempted my friend Carrie’s “perfect” chocolate chip cookie recipe.  But with a few tweaks: I used Matcha green tea instead of cinnamon, shredded coconut instead of pecans and coconut extract instead of vanilla extract.

Carrie is the most amazing baker. So it felt slightly sacrilege to even mess with her recipe. But the Matcha-infused cookies turned out to be really interesting. The bitter grassiness of the Matcha pairs perfectly with semisweet chocolate chips. And the shredded coconut and ground oats make for a fabulous cookie texture.

Happy cooking and sipping!

P.S. Many thanks to Art of Tea for the complimentary sample of their grade-A Matcha green tea to play around with in my tea foodie kitchen.

Matcha Coconut Chip Cookies

(Adapted from the Chocolate-Chip Oatmeal Cookies with Cinnamon and Pecans recipe from my foodie friend Carrie Bach’s blog, Homemade by Lia James.)

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups rolled oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon Kosher salt

2 tablespoons Matcha green tea

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons coconut extract

¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Preparation:

1.  Heat oven to 350 degrees and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. Place 1 cup of oats in a food processor and process until fine. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and whisk in flour, baking powder, baking soda, Matcha, and salt.

2.  Beat the butter and brown sugar together in an electric mixer on medium-high speed until smooth and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add egg and coconut extract, and beat until light and fluffy, about 30 seconds. Add the ground oats and flour mixture, and beat on low speed until just incorporated, about 15 seconds. Add remaining ¾ cup oats, chocolate chips, and shredded coconut, and beat on low speed until evenly distributed, about 10 seconds. Do not overmix.

3. Using a very small ice cream scoop or 1 tablespoon-size measuring spoon, form dough into balls and space them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake until cookies are cracked and set on top but look moist within cracks, about 12 minutes. Cool cookies on baking sheets on wire racks for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Included in the mix were pineapple cream pie, lemon meringue pie, bacon-apple pie, a blackberry-gin galette and my brown sugar tea tart.

They were all delicious, but my favorites were the blackberry-gin galette and the bacon-apple pie. Both reminded me of breakfast. The blackberry-gin galette tasted like a decadent, juicy berry-laden muffin. And the bacon-apple pie tasted just like a forkful of cinnamon-apple pancake topped with crispy bacon and drenched in syrup.

The brown sugar tea tart is quite simple to make. And it tastes quite simple as well. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with simple when you’ve got a mix of tea-speckled shortbread cookie crust and tea-infused custard-like filling.

Next time I make this recipe, I might experiment with a flavored black tea to add a little more depth to the tart. I highly recommend dressing it up with a dash of flavored whipped cream and/or fresh berries when you serve it.

Happy cooking and sipping!

P. S. To get the recipe for the blackberry-gin galette, visit my co-worker’s blog Spirited Bites, where she writes beautifully about creative alcohol-infused dishes.

Brown Sugar Tea Tart

(Adapted from the Ceylon Brown Sugar Tart and Ceylon Tea Tart Crust recipes in the Culinary Tea cookbook by Cynthia Gold and Lisë Stern.)

Makes 1 tart

Ingredients:

For the crust:

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 teaspoons loose leaf black tea, coarsely ground (use something strong and aromatic)

½ cup sugar

½ pound cold, unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into small cubes

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the filling:

1 tablespoon loose leaf black tea leaves (use something strong and aromatic)

½ cup boiling water

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

½ cup sugar

½ cup dark brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

confectioners’ sugar for garnish

Preparation:

For the crust:

1. Combine flour, salt, ground tea and sugar in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add butter cubes and process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

2. Whisk together egg and vanilla in a small bowl. While the processor is running, slowing pour in the egg mixture through the feed tube and process just until dough comes together. (Note: If the mixture is too dry and crumbly and it’s not coming together, add 1 teaspoon of cold water at a time until dough forms.)

3. Remove dough from processor and divide it into 2 balls. Flatten each ball into a disk shape and wrap each disk in plastic. Chill one of the disks in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. The other may be frozen for up to 1 month until you’re ready to bake another tart.

4. Remove chilled dough from the refrigerator and roll it out on a floured surface into a circle to fit a 9- or 10-inch tart or pie pan. (Note: If the dough is hard from being chilled, simply let it soften at room temperature for 10 or 15 minutes before attempting to roll it out.) Press the rolled dough into the tart or pie pan and prick the dough in several places with the tines of a fork.

5. Place tart shell in a 350-degree oven and bake for 15 to 18 minutes until golden brown. Check on the tart shell at about 5 or 7 minutes in to see if any bubbles form. If they do, prick them gently with a knife or fork to let the air escape. Let the shell cool completely before adding your tart filling.

For the filling:

1. Pour the boiling water over the tea leaves and steep, covered, for 5 minutes. Strain, discard the tea leaves, and allow the tea liquid to cool to room temperature.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together cream, vanilla, egg and cooled tea. In a large bowl, whisk together flour and sugars. Break up any lumps in the brown sugar with your fingers. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry until completely smooth.

3. Pour the filling mixture into the cooled tart shell and bake in a 400-degree oven until the filling is set and the top is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

5. Allow the tart to cool to room temperature so that it’s fully set when you serve it.  You can also chill it and serve it cold. Serve sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar and topped with whipped cream and/or fresh berries. Store the tart in the refrigerator covered in plastic wrap.

Don’t skip the tuiles! They’re not that hard to make, and when you master them, they’ll likely end up being a go-to recipe for any gathering where you truly want to impress with your dessert presentation. You can serve your favorite mousse, sorbet or ice cream in this adorable, edible cup.

This recipe is adapted from the Harney & Sons Tea Cookbook. The cookbook’s frozen yogurt is infused with a Harney & Sons chocolate-mint tea blend. Instead, I used straight up cacao husks.

Cacao husks are the outer shell of the cacao bean and they typically get discarded when the beans are processed into chocolate products. But if you steep the husks in boiled water, you get a tea-like brew that tastes like the essence of hot chocolate, without all the cream and sugar. A few companies are now selling cacao husks as tea or tea blends, including Tisano and a local Denver company near me called The Pomm.

The cacao and raspberry are a great combination together, but the cacao would also be delicious paired with strawberry or even blueberry. And the coconut tuiles are delicious with just about anything you put inside them.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Raspberry-Cacao Frozen Yogurt and Coconut Tuiles

(Adapted from the Raspberry-Chocolate Mint Frozen Yogurt and Coconut Tuiles recipes in the Harney & Sons Tea Cookbook.)

Makes 1 quart of frozen yogurt and 8 tuiles

Ingredients:

For the frozen yogurt:

½ cup water

1/3 cup cacao husks (or your favorite chocolate-flavored tea)

8 oz. fresh or frozen raspberries

1 cup sugar

1 quart plain yogurt

For the tuiles:

¼ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, plus 1 additional tablespoon melted

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

¼ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Preparation:

For frozen yogurt:

1. Boil the water, add cacao husks, and steep, covered, for 10 minutes. Strain, and set tea aside to cool.

2. Puree raspberries and sugar together in a food processor. Press mixture through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. Rinse out the food processor bowl and add the pureed raspberries, cooled tea and yogurt back into the bowl, and puree until smooth. Place the mixture in the refrigerator until well chilled. Then prepare in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. Freeze until ready to serve. Serve a scoop or two in the coconut tuiles and garnish with chocolate shavings or cacao nibs.

For the tuiles:

1. Bring the brown sugar, 4 tablespoons of butter, and corn syrup to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring constantly. Stir in the flour, and continue to boil, stirring constantly, until thickened, about 1 minute. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature, about 15 minutes. You want the mixture to be cool enough to scoop up and handle, but don’t let it get too cool or it will start to harden.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper and brush each with melted butter. Set 4 highball glasses upside down on the counter.

3. Set 4 tablespoon-size balls of the coconut dough about 6 inches apart on one of the baking sheets. Repeat for the second baking sheet. Using your fingertips, flatten each ball into 2-inch rounds. Bake the first sheet of 4 cookies until they are golden brown, about 8 minutes. The cookies will spread to about 5 inches.

4. Remove the pan from the oven and let the cookies stand for a couple of minutes until they are cool enough to touch and firm enough to hold their shape. If they are too hot they will break apart when you handle them, and if they are too cool they won’t be pliable enough to mold. Carefully loosen them from the pan with a spatula, and lay each one over a glass, gently pressing it around the glass to form a cup shape.

5. Let the cookies cool over the glasses until hardened. Remove from the glasses, invert, and let them cool completely before storing in an airtight container. While the first batch of tuiles are cooling over the glasses, put the second baking sheet in the oven and repeat the process.

I finally found an excuse to test out the sesame tea with one of my favorite things to make on a weekend—a quick and easy quinoa salad. Quinoa salad makes for a tasty weekend lunch or snack. I like to make a big batch so I can take some to work for a healthy lunch early in the week.

When we make quinoa salad at our house, we’re usually emptying the fridge of any and all veggies that need to be used up. Sometimes we’ll add leftover cooked pork chop or chicken breast. Sometimes we’ll dress it simply with a nice olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Or sometimes we’ll whip up a creamy curry dressing.

For this recipe, I played on the toasted sesame tea flavors and made an easy dressing that includes sesame oil, soy sauce and orange juice. And I cooked the quinoa in a strong brew of the toasted sesame tea.

This is not the last you’ll see of this toasted sesame tea from my tea foodie kitchen. I have an idea brewing for a sesame shitake ramen next.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Sesame Quinoa Salad

 (By Zanitea)

Makes 4 servings

 Ingredients:

1 cup water

1 tablespoon sesame flavored loose leaf black tea (I used Toasted Sesame from Adagio)

½ cup quinoa

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons orange juice

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper

½ cup each carrots, cucumber and green beans, julienned

¼ cup scallions, white and green parts thinly sliced

1 cup chopped or shredded cooked chicken or pork (optional)

¼ cup cilantro, chopped

salt and pepper, to taste

black sesame seeds, for garnish (optional, but highly recommended)

Preparation:

1. Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat, add loose leaf tea and steep, covered, for 7 minutes.

2. Strain tea into a new saucepan and add quinoa. Bring to a boil, then turn heat to low and simmer, covered, until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Turn heat off and allow quinoa to sit another 5 minutes. Remove cover, fluff quinoa with a fork and allow it to cool.

3. While quinoa is cooking, whisk together canola oil, sesame oil, orange juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce and white pepper in a medium bowl, and set aside.

4. Prepare the veggies, then add them to the bowl with the prepared dressing and toss to combine.

5. Fold in the chicken, cilantro and cooked quinoa. Add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with black sesame seeds before serving.

Tips:

• For a quick shredded chicken, simmer a small boneless, skinless chicken breast in water (or tea!) until it’s cooked through, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, allow breast to cool, then chop or shred it into small pieces.
• This recipe works with a plain black tea if you don’t have a sesame-flavored tea on hand.
• I like my quinoa salads packed with veggies. If you prefer a salad that has a higher grains to veggies ratio, either double the amount of quinoa (and water and tea) in this recipe or cut back on the amount of veggies you throw in.
• I like the veggies raw and crunchy, but you could blanch or steam the carrots and green beans for a slightly softer texture.

I tweaked the original recipe just a smidge: I upped the almond factor and I used grapefruit instead of orange zest.  The chewy texture comes from mixing in cooked brown rice into the batter. I used my favorite brown rice from Massa Organics. It’s the best brown rice I’ve ever made. It’s slightly sweet and it has a nice chewy texture. I can’t find it at my local grocery, so I order it online.

These muffins freeze well, too. I usually make a big batch to freeze so that I always have a quick and easy breakfast nibble with my morning tea.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Chai-Spiced Almond Muffins

(Adapted from the Spiced Basmati-Almond Muffins recipe in Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café Cookbook.)

 Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

nonstick cooking spray

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

½ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon grated grapefruit zest

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1 ½ cups cooked brown rice, cooled

1 cup blanched slivered almonds, lightly toasted

1 ½ cups buttermilk

2 eggs

2 teaspoons almond extract

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

spiced vanilla bean sugar (optional)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray a muffin pan that has 12 muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and grapefruit zest in a medium bowl. Add the brown sugar, crumbling it in with your fingers to break up any clumps. Add the rice, and use your fingers to distribute it throughout the dry mix. Then stir in the almonds.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, almond extract, and grapefruit juice. Slowly pour the wet mixture and melted butter into the dry ingredients. Stir until the ingredients are just combined; just don’t overmix.

4. Fill the muffin cups with batter and bake in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Sprinkle with spiced vanilla bean sugar (if using) when you remove the muffins from the oven. Allow the muffins to cool before serving.

Tips:

• Try mixing in other cooked grains in place of the brown rice, such as quinoa.
• The grapefruit zest and juice give these muffins a bitter bite, which I really like. For a sweeter, tangy bite, try orange zest and orange juice instead.
• You can use any other type of nut instead of almonds, and vanilla extract can replace the almond extract.
• These muffins freeze really well.

The downside, however, is that I come home from these test kitchen days exhausted and not really in the mood to start cooking again. I’m sure the exhaustion will fade soon and turn into a normal routine. But in the meantime, I’ve cheated a bit on this tea foodie recipe post.

It’s a super easy and super cute idea: Take your favorite packaged scone mix, fold in some lovely red-colored fruit relish, preserves or sweetened mashed up fruit bits (fresh or dried), and use a cookie cutter to make a batch of heart-shaped scones. Then give your sweetheart scones away to the ones you love on Valentine’s Day—paired with a package of your favorite tea, of course.

For this batch, I used a tasty new cream scone mix from the nonprofit Women’s Bean Project, made in collaboration with the Denver Tea Room. It’s a delicious scone mix that tastes even better knowing I’m supporting an organization that puts homeless women to work, teaching them job skills and empowering them to break the cycle of poverty.

I also used an outstanding Cranberry-Ginger Relish recipe that I got to make in the Savory Spice Shop test kitchen recently. Try it; you’ll love it not only in these scones, but also on sandwiches, cheese and crackers, or atop a piece of grilled fish or meat. Oh, and it’s incredibly easy to make.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Cheater Sweetheart Scones

(By Zanitea)

Makes about 12 scones

Ingredients:

1 plain-flavored packaged scone mix (I used Women’s Bean Project Cream Scone Mix)

½ cup red-colored fruit relish, preserves, or fresh or dried fruit pieces (I used the Cranberry-Ginger Relish recipe from Savory Spice Shop)

Preparation:

1. Prepare the scone mix according to the package directions. Before you roll out the dough, fold in your choice of red fruit.

2. Once you have your red fruit thoroughly mixed into your dough, roll out the dough on a floured surface until it’s about ½-inch thick. Use a 2-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out your scones. Place scones on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake according to package instructions.

Tips:

• Here are some red fruit suggestions: Sweet cranberry or cherry relish; finely chopped fresh cranberries, raspberries or strawberries (add a decent amount of sugar to the fresh fruit to sweeten it before you add it to the scone dough); any type of red fruit jam or preserves; or any dried red fruit, such as cranberries, strawberries or cherries.
• The scones puff up pretty good in the oven, so it’s a good idea to push the heart indentation at the top of the scone as far down as you can to overemphasize the heart shape, otherwise it might get lost in baking and look like a blob scone instead of a heart scone.

I made the hot chocolate mix to trade at a Mile High Food Swappers event. This was my second-ever food swap. (Read about what I made from the goodies I scored at my first food swap event here.) Have you ever been to a food swap? It’s a pretty sweet deal: You bring something deliciously homemade to swap with others who’ve made something just as deliciously homemade.

The best part about a food swap is that most everyone who attends is into food, so they’re bringing some really great goods. I traded my hot chocolate mix for a home brewed IPA, cranberry curd, banana rum bread, peach-jalapeño jelly, lemon-sage mustard and a Kombucha scoby. (A scoby is a culture of bacteria and yeast that serves as a starter to make my Kombucha tea. Total tea geekery, I know.)

This hot chocolate mix recipe is a simple, dairy-free deal made with sugar, Dutch cocoa powder, ground bittersweet chocolate and ground Earl Grey tea. It’s best enjoyed in milk or a non-dairy milk alternative, like almond milk or coconut milk.

Happy cooking and sipping!

Earl Grey Hot Chocolate Mix

(Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Homemade Hot Chocolate recipe.)

Makes about 8 cups of hot chocolate mix, enough to make about 40 cups of hot chocolate.

Ingredients:

3 ½ cups sugar

2 ½ cups Dutch cocoa powder

1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips, ground in a food processor

1 cup loose leaf Earl Grey tea leaves, finely ground in a spice grinder

Preparation:

1. To make the mix: Whisk all of the ingredients together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined. The mix will last for months if stored in well-sealed containers.

2. To make the hot chocolate: Whisk 2 tablespoons of the hot chocolate mix into 1 cup of hot milk (or non-dairy milk alternative).

Tips:

• You really want to use good quality chocolate here, both for the cocoa powder and the chocolate chips. My choices for chocolate are Savory Spice Shop’s Dutch Cocoa Powder and Ghirardelli’s 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips.
• Make sure the Earl Grey tea is as finely ground as you can get it so it dissolves into the hot chocolate instead of leaving behind big leafy chunks. You can try grinding the tea in a blender or food processor, but I find that a spice grinder (a.k.a. coffee grinder that you use exclusively for spices) does the best job.

I’m slowly working my way through our liquor cabinet infusing anything I can with one tea or another. This time I made a tea-infused vodka that I turned into a refreshing twist on the screwdriver, a highball cocktail that is typically made with a mix of fresh orange juice and vodka.

A quick Wikipedia search enlightened me with some fun facts about the screwdriver:

• The screwdriver received its name in the late 1940s when Americans working in the oil and gas industry in Saudi Arabia were reported to secretly pour vodka into their cans of orange juice and stir the intoxicating mixture with their screwdrivers.
• Variations on the screwdriver are typically named a ‘Screw’—e.g. a screwdriver with Schnapps and orange juice is called a ‘German Screw’.

My variation, the Plum Oolong-icious Screw, is an Oolong tea-infused vodka (using Art of Tea’s Plum Oolong) mixed with fresh-squeezed orange juice and Breckenridge Bitters (my new favorite apertif liquor from Breckenridge Distillery).

If I could define my perfect cocktail, this might be it. I love a strong cocktail (where you can taste some alcohol) mixed with fresh fruit (that’s not too sweet) and a dash of something tart or bitter. If you like a sweeter cocktail, try adding some simple syrup to this recipe. But for me, this one’s perfect just as it is.

Happy cooking and sipping!

P.S. Many thanks to Art of Tea, which provided me with complimentary samples of several tea blends to play around with for tea foodie recipe creation.

Plum Oolong-icious Screw

(By Zanitea)

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

For the tea and vodka infusion:

2 heaping teaspoons loose leaf Plum Oolong tea from Art of Tea (or other fruit-flavored Oolong tea blend)

2 cups vodka

For the cocktail:

3 ounces Plum Oolong tea-infused vodka

1 ounce Breckenridge Bitters (or other apertif-style liquor)

juice of 2 large oranges, plus 2 large pieces of fresh orange peel

enough ice to fill 2 highball glasses

Preparation:

1. Prepare the tea infused rum: Steep the loose leaf tea in the vodka in a sealed glass container for 2 to 4 hours. Strain, discard the tea leaves, and store the tea-infused vodka in a tightly sealed container.

2. Mix the cocktail: Combine the tea-infused vodka, bitters liquor and orange juice in a cocktail shaker with a few ice cubes, and shake until well combined. Strain into 2 highball glasses filled with ice. Top each cocktail with a large slice of orange peel, and serve.

Tips:

• The orange juice is the only thing sweetening this cocktail. If you prefer a sweeter drink, add a little simple syrup or agave nectar to the mixture.
• Breckenridge Bitters is prepared in the style of an apertif liquor, like Aperol (but better, in my opinion). If a more concentrated bitters, like Angostura, is what you have in your liquor cabinet, then increase the amount of tea-infused vodka in the recipe to 4 ounces, and only use a few dashes of bitters.

For this recipe, I marinated chicken breasts in oil, orange juice, orange zest, fresh ginger and garlic, and then dredged the breasts in a coating of flour and breadcrumbs that I seasoned with Matcha green tea powder, ground ginger and paprika.

Matcha is a very high quality Japanese green tea that’s finely ground into a powder. Matcha is whisked together with hot water to produce the celebrated beverage of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. It’s is also great as a cooking ingredient; it has a fresh, earthy, bittersweet flavor that adds depth and color to many dishes both sweet and savory.

Happy cooking and sipping!

P.S. Here’s another fun tea foodie recipe using Matcha: Matcha Macaroon Trees.

Matcha Breadcrumb Baked Chicken

(By Zanitea)

Makes 4 chicken breasts

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

zest and juice of 1 large orange

¼ cup olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

½ teaspoon, plus an extra pinch, of kosher salt

¼ teaspoon, plus an extra pinch, of ground white pepper

½ cup flour

½ cup finely ground breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

½ teaspoon Matcha green tea powder (I used Aiya brand’s cooking grade Matcha)

½ teaspoon ground ginger

cooking oil spray

Preparation:

1. In a shallow baking dish, mix together the orange zest, orange juice, olive oil, garlic, ginger, and a large pinch of both salt and white pepper. Place the chicken breasts in the dish, and turn them over a few times to coat them in the marinade mixture. Cover the dish, and marinate the chicken for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 hours, in the refrigerator. Turn the chicken over in the mixture a few times while it’s marinating.

2. In another shallow baking dish, mix together the rest of the salt and white pepper with the flour, breadcrumbs, and the rest of the spices.

3. When the chicken is done marinating, dredge each piece in the seasoned flour and breadcrumb mixture so that it is well coated. Use your hands to pat the coating onto both sides of the breast. Place the coated breasts in another shallow baking dish. Carefully, and liberally, spray each side of each coated breast with cooking oil; the moistened coating will brown better in the oven.

4. Bake the chicken in a 350-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and evenly browned. Depending on your oven and your baking dish, you may want to turn the chicken breasts over half way through baking to ensure an even browning. You may also want to set the oven to broil for the last 5 minutes or so to get a crispy coating.