Christmas Baking 2018 Commences

November 30, 2018

My Christmas tree is up, Christmas music is playing on Spotify 24/7 and I've already played a few Christmas concerts, which means I'm ready for Holiday Baking!! In preparation, I purchased two packs of butter on my Trader Joe's run the other day. And when I got home, I found two unopened packages of butter in my fridge---so I have sixteen sticks of butter ready for some baking (completely unintentional but I'll just got with it).
I love trying new recipes and turned to Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate-Covered Chai-Tea Bars, a recipe I had bookmarked last month. The lazy person in my loves making bars since I don't need to spoon out cookie dough onto a pan and wait for batches to bake.

These call for actual bags of tea to be thrown into the dough. I was confused when I read the recipe a few times, thinking I would need to strain it. But fear not, baking with tea leaves actually works. The Kitchn describes using them as a way to not have to measure out chai spices for the bars—anything to make baking easier!

These bars grew on me after a day--they're not heavy on the spice-level since I used the zest of an entire orange, which overpowers the spices from the tea bags. The recipe recommends using the zest of a clementine to bring out the chai spices better. But the orange and almond flours really come through to create a light, not-too-sweet flavor that would work well with a cup of coffee or tea.

I was telling a friend these are more adult flavors since the bars aren't super sweet. I keep imagining that they would be perfect for tea time.

The Recipe: Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate-Covered Chai-Tea Bars from The Kitchn. Make sure to use one clementine or the zest of half an orange if you want it to have more chai-spice flavor.




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