Baked tea — The recipe
What is the baked tea, how to prepare it, and how to conserve it?
A month ago, while cleaning the pantry, I found a small jar. The jar had a faded sticker with the label baked tea. I thought that somebody made a mistake since the content looked like the pickled eggplant.
I have Googled if anything like baked tea exists and got few results which answered my question. I poured a part of a jar content into a glass and added hot water like it was said in the instructions.
Baked tea had a beautiful taste of sweet fruits and a nice smell of cinnamon, which remembered me about the Christmas time. I decided to make my baked tea for this Christmas.
Since it is possible to conserve a baked tea, it is a great gift for your family and friends. In this story, I will teach you how to prepare baked tea and conserve it in jars.
The origin of the baked tea
The backed tea comes from the Check republic, its original name is Pečený čaj. It is a drink with more than 150 years old tradition.
The product is made of various fruits like berries, oranges, plums, apples, pears, cherries, and raisins. We spice it with spices like cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and cardamom. Baked tea got its name since it is baked in the oven at high temperature. The baked tea is drunk as a tea and is often drunk during wintertime.
How to prepare a baked tea
The quantities below suffice for 6 small jars.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg (2.2 lb) of cleaned fruits (apples, oranges, mandarins, berries, dried fruit — soaked previously)
- 2 cups of brown or white sugar
- 1.5 cups of water
- 1 lemon (organic if possible)
- 5–10 cloves
- 2 spoons of cinnamon powder
- 1 spoon of chopped ginger
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 2 spoons of rum
- 6 small jars
In my recipe, I use 500 g of peeled apples and oranges and 500 g of berries. In total it is 1 kg of cleaned and peeled fruit.
Peel, clean apples and oranges (or any other fruit of your choice). Slice fruit, transfer them into the backing plate and drizzle them with lemon juice.
Add sugar and grated lemon zest from the same lemon, that you used before (skip lemon zest if lemon is not organic). Add cinnamon, cloves, ginger, vanilla extract, and rum. For the end, add 1.5 cups of water and mix everything.
You can experiment with spices. For example, if you do not like ginger, skip it. You can adjust the amount of cinnamon, cloves and lemon to your taste. Do not worry about a large amount of sugar. The product is concentrated, you will add water before drinking.
Put the baking plate in the preheated oven to 180 ºC and bake 40 minutes. Only after that add berries, since we do not want to have them overcooked. Mix everything well and bake for another 10 minutes.
Baked tea conservation
While waiting for fruits to bake, prepare jars. You can use jars with metal caps in which you buy food in the supermarket. Wash and dry them. Optionally you can disinfect the inner side of caps with the alcohol — it minimizes the probability for contamination.
When fruit is baked, distribute the mixture form the baking plate in the jars. Close jars and turn them on the cap for three minutes.
For successful conservation be fast with the jar filling procedure, since you do not want the mixture to cool down too much. Use the kitchen towel for holding jars while pouring the content since they will become hot.
Stack the jars on the old blanket or towel close beside each other and wrap them in the blanket. If the blanket is thin, add another blanket on top of it for extra isolation. You want them to cool down as slow as possible for the successful conservation.
Keep jars in the blanket for 24 hours and then move them in the pantry. Since baked tea was filled hot, it creates an airtight seal and can last for a year or even more.
How to prepare a drink
Pour a few spoons of a baked tea from the jar to a glass or a cup. Add boiling water to fill the glass/cup and mix well. Optionally you can decorate the glass with a piece of lemon.
You can also prepare a version of a baked tea with alcohol. Just add some rum or other alcohol to the mixture. If you want a cold beverage, use cold water instead of hot and add ice.
Literature
- Naberi si čaj: Pečeni čaj, December 2020 — the Slovenian version of recipe
- Pension Tengerszem: Baked tea
- Youtube tutorial: Sana Smart Bread Maker — Baked Tea
- Our beautiful Prague: Baked Fruit Tea
