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DAVIDsTEA TeaPop and Tea-Infused Ice Pops

When I first started drinking DAVIDsTEA over four years ago, I poured over their blog for tea tips and recipes. In addition to recipes for specific teas, I have had the recipes for a TeaPop and tea-infused ice pops saved for many years now. With required social distancing going on, I have been trying a lot more teas and recipes. And with the weather getting warmer, I thought it was perfect time to try out these two recipes

TeaPop

A TeaPop sounds like a tea ice pop, but it’s actually like a soda-pop made with tea. Though I’m not much of a soda drinker, I recently started drinking and loving flavored sparkling water, so I was really excited to try this recipe.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the teas that DAVIDsTEA recommends for their TeaPops. I was planning on using my favorite iced tea, Blackberry Blizzard, but I did not realize that I was running out of it. Instead, I used Green Passionfruit. This is a new tea in my collection, so I hadn’t had a chance to try it iced yet, but I thought it would be good in this recipe because of the fruity flavors. It did taste pretty good, and it was fairly easy to make. I didn’t think that 1/2 cup of water with 4 perfect spoonfuls of tea would make as much as the recipe said it would, but it did. And the concentrated tea meant that the sparkling water didn’t dilute the flavor of the tea too much.

I do think it would have tasted better with Blackberry Blizzard, which has a stronger flavor than Green Passionfruit and therefore would taste even less watered down. I might try it again when I refill my supply of Blackberry Blizzard, but honestly I don’t know if I would bother. I would, however, try a TeaPop in DAVIDsTEA stores with a variety of different teas, once everything opens again of course.

Tea-Infused Ice Pops

My family loved making orange juice ice pops growing up, so I was excited to break out the molds again for these tea-infused ice pops. These were also fairly easy to make, though I had to do some calculations because I have a 16-oz steeper, while the recipe calls for 24 ounces of water. This ended up being a good thing because I only had 3-4 perfect spoonfuls left of Blackberry Blizzard tea.

I added about 1-2 teaspoons of honey, and let the tea steep for 10 minutes. Then, I poured the tea into the ice pop molds. The recipe makes six ice pops, so I thought I would only be able to make four. I was in luck though—my ice pop molds were smaller than those used in the recipe, so I was able to make all eight.

I left the ice pops in the freezer for about six hours, then let them thaw for a few minutes before trying to remove them. I (okay, my mom) had to use a butter knife and ended up breaking one of the popsicles, but we managed to get them out. The ice pops tasted pretty good, and I will finish the rest of them if my family doesn’t, but I definitely won’t make them again. As I ate mine, I sucked the tea out of it, leaving plain ice in the way of the rest of the tea-infused part of the ice pop. Overall, these are a fun idea, but not as great in practice for me.

While these weren’t my favorite DAVIDsTEA recipes (just wait for December), I think they are both fun for spring and summer. And I’m definitely inspired to keep making more recipes from the DAVIDsTEA blog.

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