Nothing makes me feel quite at peace with the cool weather as much as curling up with a hot cup of tea and a good book. And when I threw a tea-flavored donut into the mix, the cold hardwood floor and icy faucet water didn’t even seem that offensive anymore. I’ve always liked experimenting with different tea flavors in cooking, and I’ve been wanting to try making tea donuts for quite some time, but it took me a bit of brooding to decide what type of tea to use. In the end, I went with the slightly sweet, robust, and earthy oolong. Oolong is a Chinese tea variety that is dried in the sun and the leaves are then twisted up into tight little balls to brew loose leaf-style. You can find it packaged in tea bags at the grocery store too, but with delicate teas like oolong I like the full unfiltered flavor you get from letting them soak in the water with only a mesh tea screen separating them from the water.
I brewed the oolong in milk before pureeing the mixture in a blender and incorporating the puree into the donut batter. The result was a rich, delicately flavored baked donut that retained a lot of moisture and had a wonderfully, slight floral flavor to it. For the glaze, I really wanted to recreate the flavor of one of my favorite drinks, milk tea boba.
Milk tea is a generic flavor whose tea-intensity can vary depending on which boba cafe your getting it from, but it is basically made up of milk, a sweetener, and a black tea. To recreate the flavor, I steeped a dark black tea in milk for about an hour to get it nice and infused, then I used that milk as the base for the glaze with some powdered sugar and vanilla extract. The result was one of my new favorite glazes, deeply flavorful with the warm spiced flavor that only a tasty black tea can provide. And when combined with the oolong donuts, it made for an absolutely incredible dessert.
Oolong Donuts With A Milk Tea Glaze
Ingredients
Oolong Donuts
- 2 and 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teasp cloves
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 tablespoon oolong tea
- 3 eggs
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 and 1/2 cups sugar
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Milk Tea Glaze
- 1/2 cup milk hot
- 3 bags of black tea
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
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Begin by making the donuts. Bring the 3/4 cup milk to a boil and add the oolong tea. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool for 1 hour.
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Meanwhile, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cloves in a medium-sized bowl until well blended. Set aside.
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Once the milk tea mixture has cooled to room temperature, pour it into a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.
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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, vegetable oil, and sugar until blended. Add the buttermilk, oolong milk mixture, and vanilla extract and mix until combined. Then slowly add the flour mixture in thirds, mixing until just blended. Scoop the batter into a greased donut pan, filling the wells 3/4 full.
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Place the pan in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until the donuts have risen a bit and are lightly golden around the edges. Remove the pan from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing the donuts from the pan and allowing them to cool completely.
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While the donuts are baking and cooling, you can begin preparing the glaze. Steep the tea in the hot milk for 1 hour until it cools to room temperature, agitating it while the milk it hot to get as much of the black tea flavor to seep into the liquid as possible. Once the hour has passed, squeeze all of the liquid out of the tea bags and mix the liquid with the powdered sugar and vanilla extract until a glaze forms. If it is thinner than your liking, add a bit more powdered sugar. If it is thicker than your liking, add a bit more milk.
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Drizzle the glaze over the cooled donuts and serve immediately.
There are a large variety of oolong teas on the market, and luckily the kind folks over at Teavivre would like to give away an assortment of their oolong tea varieties to three of you! The varieties that will be included are:
- Taiwan Osmanthus Oolong Tea
- Taiwan High Mountain Oolong Tea
- Superfine Taiwan Moderately-Roasted Dong Ding Oolong Tea
- Superfine Taiwan Qing Xiang Dong Ding Oolong Tea
- Superfine Taiwan Ali Shan Oolong Tea
I used their Osmanthus oolong for the donuts because it had a stronger floral hint, but the others were equally tasty, especially the roasted tea. To enter the giveaway, please use the rafflecopter widget below. The entry period is open until 11:59 pm Pacific Standard Time on November 21st.
Hot tea is one of my favorite things. It's hard for me to narrow it down to a certain flavor though. I do like vanilla comoro from Harney & Sons!
Amazing Photos!
Is it totally juvenile of me to say hot chocolate? It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would be treated to hot chocolate during Sunday brunch. Ah, memories!
Check this website 😀
Probably coffee, but I have been getting very into green tea lately!!
tea flavored donuts – yes yes yes!
Leslie:
While I sometimes enjoy hot tea in the evening, Mornings don't start without coffee…ever.
leslieannstevenson@yahoo.com
Preciosas fotos y muy ricos estos donuts.
Oh. My. Goodness. Just wow.
Oh Eva this post is stunning! I love everything, but especially that glaze!
Sound so lovely! The perfect cold weather donut.
I lived in Taiwan, and their tea is amazing (especially the bubble tea)! I definitely need to give this a try!!
I've been too timid in the past to experiment with doughnuts, but seeing your gorgeous photos and your use of Oolong teas has inspired me. I'd have to say that any kind of tea is my favorite, they're all so versatile and lovely in their own way. Thanks, love your blog!
I "LOVE" any kind of tea-not only is it tasty, but it's very soothing too.
I love a good mug of chai, with just a dash of milk.
These look absolutely delicious! I just bought a donut pan and will definitely be making these 🙂
The depth of focus in these photos is beautiful, Eva! We're big green tea and and Earl Grey drinkers in this house. And we're drinking so much tea lately! I love boba tea, too.
I'm a total coffee fan!
Hot chocolate with marshmallows of course! Great photography and setup as usual
My fave teas are earl grey and matcha green tea. These donuts looks absolutely scrumptious! 🙂
Green tea with a little lemon is my favorite hot beverage. I don't drink coffee and I don't really have a sweet tooth. So tea is where it's at!
This flavour is fabulous! I absolutely love these!
I love tea of all kinds. I think my favorite is a jasmine green
my favorite beverage is all kinds of tea!
My favorite morning drink is coffee; my favorite afternoon and evening drink is tea
I used to live in Australia and I dream about this one soy chai latte that just made me smell autumn and coziness and home, even when I was so far away. It remains the best chai of my life. Or when I lived in Australia, my friends used to make me real Turkish coffee. It is such a lovely and special technique to make it. I miss both of these favorite drinks.
I love tea, and those doughnuts look delicious!
This recipe looks AMAZING. I tried some earl gray cookies recently, but the flavor was very subtle… I like that this recipe calls for steeping in milk before adding to the batter, I imagine that really helps the flavor permeate through the batter. I can't wait to try this!
I used to never like tea, but then I was introduced to loose-leaf. I started with very fruity black and herbal teas, but after many years have a special love for very smokey, strong black teas. Oolongs are amazing, but I'm still exploring all the different kinds!
Also, the pictures are making me drool…
I switch between coffee and tea daily.
My favorite hot beverage is tea. Any kind of mint tea is my every morning drink!
I love chai lattes.
These are beyond stunning. Your photography is gorgeous (as always) and the glaze is so beautifully done! I love that you use oolong — such a unique take on tea-infused baked goods. Thanks so much for posting. 🙂
Oolong is one of my favorite teas and these donuts are beautiful!
Earl gray tea with a little bit of milk and a little bit of honey.
I just made chocolate chip cookies with Earl Grey browned butter. Yum! And these sound over the top, too. I usually do drink tea, especially in the cold months. And my house gets very cold!
I'm in love with your mugs! Gorgeous collection.
Right now, I am loving Pumpkin Latte Coffee
As for tea, I prefer English or Irish breakfast tea
Digicats {at} Sbcglobal {dot} Net
These are SO gorgeous! I just love them. I'm a tea drinker all the way (black, please!)
Amazing! I love the photos!
i don't drink much tea, but that doesn't mean i can't appreciate that stunning glaze atop some equally lovely donuts!
Hi Eva,
I love reading your blog, and am very happy that you’re doing what you do… teaching people to cook with healthy ingredients is so important in fostering a healthy life and more importantly a healthy future. Today I am contacting you because I too am trying to do my part in getting people to eat and live healthier. In 2008 I set on a quest to look for the ideal cooking pot, one that would give me all the nutrients from the food being cooked without adding its own ingredients or contaminants. It was a personal happening that led me to do this and all my research pointed out in one direction — Pure Clay. After several years of research and travel I set out to make my line of pure clay cooking pots and their made in the USA. I had benefited so much from cooking in these pots that I had to share it with the world.
We choose to keep our raw material pure because the health benefits are overwhelming this way and greatly surpass that of cookware made from other kinds of manufactured clay like ceramic etc. I have come to read and love your blog greatly and would like you to consider taking part in our Affiliate Program so we can together promote this extremely healthy way of cooking to all your readers. You can find all the information about our cookware at miriamsearthencookware dot com or PureClayCookware dot com and sign up for the affiliate program by clicking on the affiliate tab on top.
And oh by the way we’re giving out pots to those who sign up early and the list is quickly filling up, I really hope you can be a part of it. We need your help in bringing back to life this beautiful, healthy, extremely eco-friendly method of cooking, it goes so well with your theme of helping people eat healthy, so do consider joining us.
Good luck with your blog.
Miriam Kattumuri
I love adding different tea flavors to dishes, they can make the most basic dish something special Have you read the cookbook "Cooking with Tea"? It has fantastic tea uses in savory and sweet!
p.s. your photos are seriously out of this world stunning!
Gosh those are so stunning! I can't even get over how amazing your photos are.
I love plain orange pekoe tea. Its a comfort habit thing. It reminds me of my mom.
You're photos and food styling is Absolutely Gorgeous!! I am loving the photo of the smoke coming from the tea cup…Very Lovely!!! My favorite hot beverage is coconut chai milk tea with honey.
wimbley73@aol.com
That image of steam rising from that beautiful mug is killing me — so stunning! Ditto for all of these pictures. And the doughnuts sound out of this world. This post is truly a work of art, Eva! I love tea in desserts. Lately I've been obsessed with the Alberta Street Chai from Townshend's – the smoky kick from the lapsang souchong is like crack to me. 🙂
These look delicious!
This time of year I like to drink hot cocoa with a bit of coffee added to it and a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.
Those photos of your dooughnuts are absolutly beautiful. So dreamy…
I am an earl Grey with jasmine-woman myself.
I mix chai tea and hot chocolate-made from scratch with Hersheys..
yummmm
Beautiful site! Was searching for a roulade to give as a gift to our Head Chef where I work..Roasted Hazelnut Nutella Roulade! What is my favorite hot beverage? Coffee in the morning, and opening my tea box for afternoon/evening. Strong black or a flower tea..yum! Again..bookmarked your site as I enjoy the view. The tea would be "icing on the cake" or in this instance..Roulade 🙂 Donna
Strong Earl Grey with milk and brown sugar!
I'm pretty simple when it comes to hot drinks and prefer my hot coffee with cream. These donuts look absolutely gorgeous, I really love the flavors you used for them 🙂 so creative!
Beautiful donuts…love tea, hate coffee!
I love tea, it's definitely my favorite hot beverage… watching tea leaves unfurl slowly is mesmerizing.
I wish I can get my hands on some of the tea cups and tea makers. My oolong tea brews will taste much better. You're photos are absolutely gorgeous. Keep it up.
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