Celebrate National Chocolate Day with a chocolate tea

Guittard original bittersweet chocolate
stu spivak

While there are many chocolate flavored teas available on the market, a chocolate tea is also an afternoon tea featuring chocolate as a key ingredient in the tea foods. To have a chocolate tea you need no more than a good pot of tea, some chocolate cookies, cakes, brownies, or even chocolate candy.
One particularly nice chocolate tea food is shortbread coated with chocolate. Those chocolate striped cookies you can buy in the grocery store will do, or you can make or buy shortbread cookies and dip them yourself.

To make your own chocolate for dipping, simply melt some semisweet or milk chocolate chips in a pan sitting in a bowl of hot water. Alternatively, you can melt them in your microwave following the instructions for your particular oven. You can dip one half of the cookie in the chocolate and then lay it on a cake rack to cool and harden or you can use a spatula to smooth it on one side of the cookie. Be sure to put a waxed paper lined baking sheet under the cake rack to catch drips. They can be returned to the bowl for reuse.

Here are some recipes for chocolate foods by other food examiners.
Chocolate sponge strawberry drizzle cake
Vegan chocolate cake
Pumpkin chocolate chunk cookie recipe
Perfect chocolate brownies from scratch

There are also many very good chocolate flavored teas available in a range of prices and styles. Stash makes a very nice chocolate mint oolong available in many grocery stores. You can also purchase them on line. Adagio’s Chocolate is Ceylon black tea infused with chocolate. Kusmi Spicy Chocolate is a Chinese black tea infused with chocolate and spice. Serendipi Tea sells A Box of Chocolates, an assortment of chocolate teas, some of which are true teas and some of which are herbal. Chocolate Bar Tea, by Chocolate Bar, is a combination of chocolate, vanilla, rooibos, and black tea. Bristen sells four varieties of chocolate herbal tea. This is just to mention a few. You can find many more if you search the Internet.

Create your chocolate tea to suit you. You could just have a cup of tea and a chocolate sandwich cookie from the grocery store. It doesn’t matter. As long there is chocolate and tea, you are having a chocolate tea.

Happy National Chocolate day!