🧁 Five-Flavor Muffins

published 1 YEAR AGO | 2 MINS READ

Students always really liked my Herb classes, but that's mostly just because I bribed them by bringing in food.

So in the Intro to Herbs class, when we were introducing the five tastes, I would bring in these muffins that had ingredients that represented all five flavors.

Try them out!

Green Tea Cranberry Muffins

This is a recipe that I found in a magazine once for green tea muffins. They're really nice, not too sweet, and have all five flavors:

Ingredients

  • Green tea (loose leaf of bag) to make 1 cup strong tea
  • 8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter)
  • 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1-1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp. orange zest
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries (plus more for garnish)
  • 1 cup confectioners' sugar

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
  2. Boil 1 cup of water, remove from heat, and stir in tea. Let steep for 5 minutes (this will be bitter, but that's ok).
  3. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Stir in brown sugar and honey. Set aside to cool.
  4. In a large bowl, combine flour, ginger, orange zest, and salt.
  5. Stir in butter mixture.
  6. Add baking soda to 1/2 cup of the tea. Then add eggs, vanilla, and tea to the batter and stir to combine.
  7. Portion batter into muffin cups, filling each about full. Bake about 15 minutes, rotating halfway through, until toothpick inserted in the center of the muffins comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it.
  8. Cool in pan. Once cool, remove from pan.
  9. ICING: In a small bowl, combine confectioners' sugar with 1 TB of remaining tea. Whisk, adding more tea 1 tsp at a time until you have a thick but pourable icing.
  10. Drizzle over cooled muffins, sprinkle with a few cranberries, and let set about 15 minutes before serving.

The Five Flavors

So maybe you can see that this recipes contains all five flavors:

  • Green tea is bitter.
  • Honey is sweet.
  • Ginger is acrid.
  • Cranberries are sour.
  • Salt is salty.
  • Orange zest is aromatic.

Let me know if you make these muffins, and see if you can taste all five flavors! ​

If you want to try another Chinese medicine recipe, check out this video on Black Sesame Balls.