Black Tea

This variation on the mezcal margarita leans on a quick Earl Grey tea syrup and grapefruit liqueur to evoke the feelings of a cozy morning.

Made with sweetened black tea, milk, and black tapioca pearls, this classic milk tea recipe is sweet, creamy, and delicious.

Tibetan people drink butter tea in copious quantities throughout the day. More like a savory broth than a sweet tea, it is deliciously smooth and creamy.

Reverse the typical relationship between iced tea and ice cubes by using cubes that impart more flavor into the glass as they melt and mingle instead of diluting the drink.

This milky black tea mixes the sweet spiciness of dried ginger with piney-fruity-minty green cardamom and the brash, earthy heat of black pepper.

This refreshing pick-me-up, made with rye, sherry, and crisp cold-brewed black tea, is slightly nutty, slightly malty, tart and thirst-quenching.

This pie was inspired by my friend Erin Clarkson, a fellow baker who asserts that “if it can be infused, it should be infused with Earl Grey.” I took that to heart to create this caramel-spiked pie, infusing the milk and cream with plenty of tea before whisking them into a classic custard filling. And because I adore the combination of chai tea and caramel, there’s a variation for that version.

Keep it simple and light with this large-format play on the Daiquiri, where the dial is turned all the way up with the addition of black tea and dried citrus.

This spiked fruit tea is intentionally not too boozy, but you can also just leave the bourbon out.

Take down the temperature of a classic hot toddy and turn it into a refreshing summer tipple: a seasonal mix of tea, citrus, spices, and rye whiskey.

Hemp milk makes the fastest, creamiest alt-milk with very little waste, but any nondairy milk works.

This festive, spiced toddy starts with a black tea base. English breakfast tea is especially good with the black pepper and star anise, but Earl Grey would be nice, too.

Turn this punch recipe up a notch with a decorative ice ring.

This spin on the home cooking favorite is a nod to a classic Southern combination: iced tea and cornbread. Here, the tea makes a sweet and shiny glaze and the delicate sweetness of fresh corn kernels balances out the buttery bread. Muffins are perfect for grab-and-go breakfasts, but you could also make it in a cast-iron skillet and serve family style. Beware, your overnight guests may never leave.

Slightly bruised or wrinkled stone fruit is ideal for making the infused syrup; peaches and nectarines work too.

It might be hard to go back to regular iced tea ever again.

When we added Earl Grey ice cream to our trucks' offerings in 2009, New Yorkers went mad for it. Not surprisingly—black tea, combined with bergamot oil, cuts through the summer heat about as well as anything. We use a high-quality loose tea from our favorite tea brand, Rishi, which uses pure Italian bergamot citrus oil (and not bergamot flavoring), to make the most intensely fragrant Earl Grey tea ice cream.

Here at Epicurious, we're big fans of the nutty, fruity buckwheat-biscuit shortcakes in Alice Medrich's cookbook, Pure Desserts. So we created a version we can enjoy all year long. Cooking dried apricots in Earl Grey tea with a vanilla bean infuses them with sweet spices that pair nicely with the earthy bitterness of buckwheat flour. Don't forget to freeze the butter for 1 hour before grating.

The idea here is to concentrate a few strong complementary flavors to create a cake that is pleasantly bitter and not too sweet. Tartine chiffon cake is made with whole-grain dark buckwheat flour, and then layered with blood orange marmalade and bergamot-infused blackout chocolate ganache. The ganache sets quickly, so cut your cake layers and have your filling and syrup on hand when ready to assemble.

Scoring the plums helps the poaching liquid infuse the fruit all the way to the pit.