toasted hazelnut chai tea

A post in Habeas Brulee inspired my first investigation into blending tea. The best way to describe it is an aromatic trip to heaven.

The ingredients were listed in grams on Habeas, and since I don't have a scale I had to guestimate proportions, and so will you, unless you have a scale handy.

37 grams black tea
50 grams toasted hazelnuts
12 grams rosepetals
20 grams whole cinnamon sticks
15 grams whole cardamom pods

method:
TOAST    the hazelnuts until they are slightly browned and smell good. This might be 15 minutes at 300º, depending on your oven's personality.

CRUSH   separately the hazelnuts, rosepetals, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom pods.

BLEND  all of the chopped ingredients with the black tea.

The objective is to keep the blend coarse and not make a fine powder that will slip through your strainer. It is best to crush by hand... I used my mortar and pestle with a broken handle, which worked fine, but I am looking into a better option for crushing the ingredients. The seeds kept jumping out of the mortar and the broken pestle made a blister on my palm. A bit more effort went into crushing than I had anticipated!