I crave the autumn season like a favorite dessert. I start getting the itch for scarves, pumpkin everything (like pumpkin turkey chili), and crispy air.
The nights suddenly cool off and I’m in a desperate search for a light, long sleeve pull over or a blanket that takes the chill off. The only thing I’m missing is that evening cup of tea.
I don’t drink a ton of tea in the summer, but during the fall and winter you can find me with a cup of tea, curled up on the couch with a blanket over my legs and my cat, Audrey, by my side. It’s the perfect way to end the day and it all begins with “The Magic of Tea.” No, really!
I was totally tickled to have the opportunity to bake with seasonal teas! I’m not lying in the slightest when I say that tea is one of my favorite things to bake with. We have a “tea drawer” in our kitchen, and there is absolutely always a box of pumpkin spice tea in it come fall. Naturally, as you could probably guess from the first couple of paragraphs of this post, a pumpkin spice tea is practically made for me, and I knew right away what I wanted to make with it!
In preparing the scone dough, I used all of the usual suspects when you make something with pumpkin. Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves all go into the dry ingredient mixture (you could definitely just use pumpkin pie spice if you don’t have all of these in your pantry). But for the wet ingredients, I steeped one Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea bag and allowed it to cool before mixing everything together.
The end flavor of the scones is unreal! So much of that luscious, deep fall flavor we expect from the pastries we buy from a bakery, we can get in a scone that you can easily make at home.
This tea is so yummy that I really wanted to use the tea two ways, and I could not think of a better way than combining that beautifully steeped black tea with all of its fall spices with my favorite salted caramel recipe to make a glaze.