A new food trend is on the rise which would surely be a source of delight for coffee, tea and dessert lovers. Nobody is sure when it all started but coffee and tea are slowly seeping their way into desserts and even pastries in general.
Datassential Menu Trends notes an increasing growth of dessert menu items that contains coffee and tea. For example, coffee/espresso desserts are present in almost a quarter of dessert menus which is a rise of two percent from a year ago's level. On the other hand, tea-based items appear in 5 percent of the menus surveyed but still showed a steady rise in the past four years.
A case in point is the new offering from Beverly Hills-based American Tea Room, the tea Ceylon pannacotta with Ceylon tea-infused cream topped with black sesame seeds. According to the National Restaurant News article by Fern Glazer, the tea-based dessert became such a hit that American Tea Room culinary director Valeria Gordon is planning to introduce a matcha version of the pannacotta.
Coffee flavored ice cream has been around for a while now but it seems that tea is catching up soon. Portland-based The Nines hotel pastry chef Hillary Kirkton is offering the No. 9 Tea Ice Cream Sundae, a mixture of the hotel's signature blend black tea with rose petals along with other ingredients. Hardcore tea lovers can even opt to pair the delicious ice cream with the hotel's assortment of tea cookies.
On the other hand, coffee's penetration into pastries has deepened in recent years. For example, Vie which is located in Western Springs Illinois is now offering Coffee & Donuts Make Me Go Nuts, coffee infused donuts dusted with cocoa-sugar and even comes with the Sparro Coffee gelato.
Even the humble pancake was not spared of this latest trend. Yes, technically a pancake is not a dessert in most places but it is considered a dessert in Finland according to a Wikipedia. Coffee flour, a scientifically formulated dough mixture by a biophysicist Daniel Perlman from Brandeis University in Massachusetts will soon be available in the market. With its introduction, coffee-infuse pancakes may soon become a big trend according to Huffingtonpost due to the coffee flour's amazing qualities, such its antioxidant content called chlorogenic acid (CGA) as well as the impressive caffeine content that four grams of the special flour contain as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.
Coffee and tea are two of the most versatile ingredients around. They can be included in all types of food preparations, most notably in desserts. In addition, it would not matter how they are prepared: they can undergo baking, frying and even freezing while retaining their flavor intact. It's inevitable then, that more exciting dessert creations based on these ingredients are still to come.