by Lindsey Goodwin

In the last installment of our series on the sweet side of tea, WTN looks at the treats that go with the drink, sweetened or not. Just as we found there’s a lot more to sweeteners than sugar, we learned that the snack you serve with a cup of tea today isn’t your grandma’s sugar cookie.

Pairing 101

Most people still pair tea with sweets, but these have evolved along with tea palates.

Pearl Dexter, editor of Tea A Magazine, noted that, while individual tastes have to be taken into consideration, there are some basic rules for pairing.

Here are some guidelines she and other sources gave:

• Don’t let strong teas overpower delicate sweets.
• Cloying sweets, like those paired with coffee, linger in the mouth and mask teas’ subtler flavors.
• Puer cuts stronger flavors and pairs well with heavy or cream-based sweets.
• Use all the senses; go slowly and evaluate.

Chinese and Japanese sweets

Marybeth Welch, who makes wagashi (Japanese sweets) professionally, explained that they are delicate shapes handcrafted from rice flour, sugar and traditional ingredients like azuki bean paste. Most traditional Japanese sweets are unavailable in America, she added, but those that are can pair well with certain teas. Look for these:

• Dagashi – generally fried, sugary, readymade sweets tucked away in the cracker section of Japanese markets; a popular street food and casual tea snack in Japan
• Higashi – tiny, elaborate dry wagashi made of pulled or molded sugar
• Wayogashi – Japanese-Western fusion sweets
• Yokan – dense, chewy, shelf-stable wagashi

Mariko Okura, manager of TafuNY, said wayogashi suit the American palate. Her company recently released wayogashi-style Wabi-Sabi cupcakes, which combine Japanese teas with Japanese and Western flavors.

Winnie Yu, Teance’s founder and tea buyer, said in China, most people pair puer with rich, heavy sweets like moon cakes, a popular item at her tea room. In green tea producing areas, greens are paired with light pastries, but quintessential Chinese greens pair well with other light sweets like 1,000 Layer Cake and sweet tofu.

Western fare

Bakers such as Amai, Biscottea and TafuNY are using ground teas as spices in sweets. Laurance Milner, Biscottea’s owner, said Italian-style biscotti are meant to go with coffee, but his tea biscotti (recently featured on The Food Network’s Unwrapped) are geared toward tea.

Favored during Victorian times and since forgotten, fruit-based sweets, such as pâte de fruit (gelatin-free fruit jellies), are starting to reappear. Easton pointed to “sweetmeat trees,” decorations offering tiny baskets of dried fruits, and Pratt called dried fruits and comfitures “our most divine forms of sugar.”

Candy

Joan Freeman, Chocolatea’s owner and chef, sometimes uses tea as a “functional ingredient,” but feels the most successful tea chocolates taste like “true tea in true chocolate.”

She added that teas with strong flavors are easier to blend. This may be because, as Yu put it, chocolate is “overpowering” and masks subtler flavors.

Yu partnered with Chuck Seigel, owner of Charles Chocolates, to make tea truffles that go beyond Earl Grey. Seigel said, “The notes in the chocolates match the notes in the teas, such as robust chocolate with charcoal-fired oolong.”

Tea is finding its way into more than chocolate. Among their varied products, Keiko Tea makes hard candies and Sencha Naturals makes mints, both with tea.

Sylvana Levesque, Keiko’s vice president of business development, said well-known chains have spent millions of dollars on research to find that most Americans want tea as a functional ingredient in sweets without a predominant tea flavor, which would explain why both Keiko’s candies usually taste more like flavors other than tea, and Sencha’s flavored mints outsell its original line.