Loose Leaf Tea: Dessert Anyone?

Loose leaf tea is a culinary delight. Drinking loose leaf tea provides a gustatory experience that really can't be compared to the experience of traditional tea bags regardless of what brand you buy. If you've avoided drinking loose leaf tea because of the fear that it is too difficult to prepare or looks too complicated, you'll find the following information helpful. Loose leaf tea has many more health benefits than the powdered tea contained in traditional tea bags, which would be expected since it is less processed, but health benefits aren't the only positive aspect of loose leaf tea.

I discovered loose leaf tea by accident. My husband and I purchased a copy of a vegan cookbook The Artful Vegan, and we were eager to try the scrumptious-sounding vegan desserts the cookbook contained. Dessert seemed to be a much more logical place to start considering most of the gourmet entrée choices featured exotic ingredients and required a 12-step process to prepare. I was instantly drawn to the recipe for Earl Grey Tea Truffles because I love chocolate and have no trouble devouring an entire $45 box of Godiva truffles. Difficulty presented itself when I got to line three on the ingredient list and realized I needed an ingredient that I had no idea where to find: loose leaf Earl Grey tea. I considered improvising and cutting open tea bags instead, but I knew I had to make at least an effort to find the required ingredient since it was the focal point of a very delicious-sounding dessert.

As luck would have it, a few weeks after reading the recipe, I was shopping in neighboring Pennsylvania, and I stumbled upon my answer in the King of Prussia Mall-Teavana-an entire store devoted to loose leaf tea. Behind their counter is an eye-catching display of very oversized tins containing an almost endless variety of loose leaf tea. Their tea comes in black, green, white, red, and herbal, to name a few. I solved my dilemma at $7.60 for four ounces. Certainly, salvaging the ground tea from Earl Grey tea bags would have been cheaper, but I figured that if the Earl Grey tea truffle recipe turned out to be a disaster, I could always roll the remaining loose leaf tea and smoke it (I'm not and never have been a smoker, but I wouldn't want my tasty Earl Grey loose leaf tea to go to waste!)

The truffles turned out to be a culinary work of art. The chocolate, rather than being mixed with milk as in a traditional truffle recipe, was mixed with soymilk that was steeped in Earl Grey loose leaf tea. I had a very easy (yet gourmet) dessert with minimal effort, and I found other uses for what has now become a growing collection of loose leaf tea. Since then, I've turned into a daily drinker of loose leaf tea.