Food pairing: hot cross buns x tea
The weekend before last, my new neighbour kindly dropped off a box of hot cross buns. The next day, I made myself a cup of tea, assembled this and a bun on my tea tray and took it outside. As I sat on my garden seat, the hedonistic experience of pulling apart the pillowy, sticky bun with my fingers, savouring its sweet, fruit and spice flavour in my mouth, and washing it down with sips of my Nepali tea made realise this was an experience I needed to share.
So, yesterday, I had a little group of taste testers help me discover what teas pair best with hot cross buns.
My six-person tasting panel consisted of two 40+ year-olds and a 9, 10, 11 and 12 year old. All discerning foodies.
The tasting parameters
Hot cross buns: Daily Bread sourdough traditional (fruity) and chocolate and sour cherry.
I choose two styles of sourdough hot cross buns from Daily Bread. I went with these following research I did last year on the best hot cross buns (Daily Bread being amongst the best), and the fact that I'm obsessed with eating anything sourdough (side note: Ooh-fa does great sourdough pizza).
These were all served plain, untoasted - although some of my taste-testers chose to add a generous slathering of butter.
Teas: eight teas from Malawi, China, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka
I shortlisted eight teas which I felt would make the best matches based on my previous experience with food and tea pairings;
One white from Malawi
One yellow from China
One oolong from Malawi
Five black teas from Nepal, Malawi, India, Sri Lanka and China
The white and yellow were my 'wild card' teas as in theory, neither of these should pair well with the sweet, oily, dense buns.
The tasting process
We started with the traditional hot cross buns paired with three poured teas: the Malawi oolong, Indian black and Nepali black, before moving to the wild card teas - the yellow and white.
We privately rated each tea, and chose our single favourite pairing. Once everyone was done, we shared this with the group.
The team was eager to keep eating, so forgoing a break to rest our palates, we swiftly moved onto the chocolate and sour cherry buns. These were served with a Sri Lankan black, a Malawi black and a Chinese black. We again individually rated the teas and chose our single best pairing.
The results
WINNER: traditional hot cross bun + tea pairing:
💜 Glenburn Summer Darjeeling, black tea, India
RUNNER-UP: Himalayan Royale Handcrafted Tips, black tea, Nepal
2ND-RUNNER UP: Yunnan Yellow 2022 harvest, yellow tea, China
WINNER: chocolate and sour cherry hot cross bun + tea pairing:
💜 Laoshan Imperial, black tea, China.
Laoshan was the unanimous winner across the tasting panel for the chocolate bun pairing (apart from the 10 year-old, who liked none of the teas in the final round 😄).
If you'd like to create your own Easter tea pairing, follow the links above for the winning teas, or take a look through my loose-leaf collection. Drop me a line if you would like my views on your selection: anna@theteacurator.co.nz
~ Anna
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