When my fellow food blogger Mine informed me about the 17th IMBB, I started to think what I can cook up with tea. Since it is very hot here, I was not (and still am not) in the mood to even light up the stove; I had to come up with something that does not require any heating. In fact I thought: cooler the better.

Everybody that I know of drinks tea, one type or another. I didn’t even touch anything but some herbal teas when I was growing up. But now I certainly drink all sorts of tea every single day, bake tea cake every once in a while and my sun-tea is sought for in various occasions, but this is the extend of my tea usage in the kitchen (and in the house, for that matter.)

Last week in the office I was drinking using a “Peach Green Tea” bag and a thought occured to me… Next day I brewed tea under the sun. This is my preferred way if we were to drink it cold. I used regular flavored tea, as I wanted to incorporate the flavors by adding on to it. Before putting into fridge, added mint and lemon as usual.

Couple days later (not that I needed that much time for it to cool down, but mostly because I was lazy and busy) I mashed the peaches that were given by our lovely neighbour using our handy handblender; to my surprise it came out to be exactly 1 cup! This amount was used to set the basis of my recipe as I had nearly endless supply of the other ingredients in mind.

Next, I added 2 cups of home made ice tea (well, cold actually, but you know what I mean), juice of a whole lemon (which came out to be 1/4 cup) and 1/3 cup sugar. Stirred these for a while to make sure sugar dissolved thoroughly. Was not sweet enough, and there went another 1/3 cup sugar into the mix. While mixing these together the mint growing in the kitchen windowsill was looking right at me. Tea and mint go together so well that I could not resist putting some in even though I knew the color of the finished product will lose its vibrant peach color. Oh, well.

Chopped up 10 fresh mint leaves very finely and added to the mix. Last but definitely not least: the vodka. You can make up your own reasons to add vodka, mine was simple: I needed something to keep the mix from being a solid ice. 1/4 cup was enough for me. Sure enough you can try other drinks that you think might go with this. Maybe limoncello?

Covered it with saran, and put into fridge to cool (for couple of hours) before putting down in the freezer (yep, our freezer is in the lower section.) Next morning I mixed it using a fork, and made a slush and back to freezer. Couple hours later, did it again. Scooped it out to serve in wine glasses and you see how it looks…

Its texture is somewhere between snowcone and sorbet. The ice crystals look really nice, not to mention the taste. Mint and peach totally have dominant flavor, but you get a hint of the tea, as well. This is what we needed in this summer heat; grab a spoon and dive in.

With my sincere apologies to Italians, I think this deserves to be called a “peach tea granita”!

Bon Apetit.

---

To sum it up; here is my ingredients list:

Peach Tea Granita:

• 1 cup of mashed peaches
• 2 cups of cold tea, brewed under the sun, cooled with mint and lemon
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 10 mint leaves
• 1/4 cup vodka

This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2005 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Dessert, Make Ahead. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.