Taking a break from our typical restaurants and street festivals, here’s some Q&P at home, in a kitchen that has made everything from rainbow cakes to bacon explosions. From the TO Food Fest, we purchased some tea from Marathon Donuts & Coffee and a Beng-beng chocolate bar from OEY Trading Co.
Dividing up the black and orange pekoe tea mix.
Internationally famous for their Hong Kong Style Milk Tea, Tony Chiu and Harvey Lin’s small coffee shop also sells packages of tea to take home. Their special blend of tea is a mix of red tea (black tea) including orange pekoe. At the TO Food Fest, we quizzed them on the proper methods of preparing the tea, which were surprisingly simple.
Almost everything you need to make your own cup of milk tea!
For regular hot milk tea, use two spoons of tea per cup. Note that the “spoons” refer to Chinese soup spoons, and a “cup” is a mug, rather than the imperial measurements. Add boiling water and steep the tea for 10 minutes.
Filtering the tea: This isn’t the typical method, but we were making a large batch.
After 10 minutes of steeping, use a coffee filter to strain out the tea grounds. Typically, this could be done in a tea pot, or over a mug. However, we like to go the excessive route, and made a full cooking pot of tea. I’d recommend not doing this as it takes a while to filter all the tea!
Making a large batch means many many coffee filters!
Once the tea is separated from the grounds, it is ready to drink! The resulting tea is quite red in colour, which is why black tea is often known as red tea. Add sugar and evaporated milk to your taste for a nice cup of hot Hong Kong Style Milk Tea.
We just so happened to have the same brand of evaporated milk.
However, our reason for making a large batch of tea was to have plenty of cold tea on hand. For cold milk tea, there is no need to increase concentration by adding more tea grounds or less water. The process is the same as making hot tea, except to add sugar prior to placing in the fridge to cool.
The Final Result: Cold Milk Tea!
When chilled, add evaporated milk only to the amount of tea you plan on drinking. This ensures the tea keeps for a longer time – however it was mid July and we had no trouble drinking all of it over the weekend. Overall, the tea was by no means hard to make, but I’d be unlikely to purchase another bag for making at home. This is really only due to laziness and location, as Marathon’s shop is nearby, as are several cha chaang tangs which make a decent cup of milk tea.
Indonesian Beng-Beng Chocolate Bar
In addition to the milk tea, we also brought home a Beng-Beng chocolate bar, as I have a penchant for trying non-Canadian candies. The bar is wafer and cream based (like Kit-Kat), but topped with caramel, and coated in rice crispies and chocolate.
Beng-Beng Innards: Hazelnut cream, wafers & rice crispies
I thought the chocolate bar was quite good, since it managed to combine all my favourite chocolate bar elements, hazelnut, wafer and rice crispies into a single bar! However, as good as Beng-Beng was, I would not go out of my way to source another one.
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Sunday Afternoon, July 29, 2012
Marathon Donuts & Coffee
3300 Midland Ave, Scarborough
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