The City Sweet Tooth

I had the pleasure of attending this year’s Coffee and Tea Festival, and as I suspected, there were plenty of sweets to sample along with the great selection of coffees and teas. These are from Hancha Tea! (photo by Marion Vitus)

These are from Tavalon!

These beauties are from Harney & Sons! (photo by Marion Vitus)

I missed the chocolate tasting as I couldn’t attend Saturday, but did luck out in catching samples of this crumble made with blood oranges, tea, and rice from the “Think Outside the Cup: Creating Coffee-And Tea-Infused Desserts” panel with Chef Melody McGinley Whitelaw. Really yummy!

Here’s part of the layout from Tay Tea, they had some nice flavors. Especially this one:

It is super-delicious!

I got to try some great Rugelach from Brooklyn-based Erica’s Rugelach and Baking Company. They were moist, sweet, and went well with the coffees and teas we were drinking.

Turkish delight at the Turkish coffee booth!

Action shot! The making of Turkish coffee.

The final product, sweet and strong! Like I like my men… ahem….

And the aftermath. It was great while it lasted! Time for more sweets!

Chip’n Dipped was there with their all natural awesome cookies, truffles, and English Toffee! Did you know I love English Toffee? I totally do.

This is the setup for Ancestral Coffee:

My coffee geek friends (thanks John and Marion!) told me the scale makes for the most exact coffee brewing. Their coffee was awesome.

Here we have several flavors of Best Friends Cocoa. Just the idea of so many cocoa flavors at my disposal made me very happy indeed! My fave was cinnamon. They also have several cocoa recipes for alcoholic drinks I encourage you to check out by clicking here!

Deborah’s Kitchen was there with their yummy spreadable fruits!

The biggest selection of sweets came from A Taste of Home bakery in North Bellmore, Long Island.

(photo by Marion Vitus)

Here’s a closer look at one of those cookies, these cookies had special surprise fillings! There was a raspberry filled sugar cookie, peanut butter filled chocolate cookie, coconut filled chocolate cookie, and this fudge filled chocolate chip cookie! These were my faves of the show! We theorized that they must have rolled the cookie dough out flat in circles, put a dollop of filling in, then pinched it shut, like making a dumpling. There were faint tell-tale pinch marks on top of the cookies. Anyway, they were so good!

Here are some nice green tea cookies made by Amai. Yummy!

There were also some interesting new tea products such as Jada coffee and tea mouth pouches. Best described as the tea version of chewing tobacco. Interesting, but not ultimately to my taste.

Another one was Sympatea, which is basically a tea bag built into a disposal spoon. Interesting!

Here’s a back view.

These are from Georgia’s Bistro and Patisserie. Oolala!

Let’s end this with a shot of Guayaki Yerba Mate, which I learned is neithor coffee nor tea! Crazy!