Sipping Southern Tea & Glazed Strawberry Biscuits

On any given afternoon, one of my favorite ways to take a break from the busyness of life and refresh my energy is with a cuppa tea and a baked good.

The hot days of summer have wound down and as they do, I switch my tea from iced to hot. Tea and a tasty treat hit the spot in those few hours between lunch and dinner making for a perfectly timed pick-me-up. 

Tea & Biscuits

When we think of afternoon tea, tea and biscuits are a traditional menu choice adopted from the British. The European biscuit is actually a lightly sweet, crisp, or crumbly cookie, opposite of the type of biscuit we bake here in the States. 

But, I’m loving this idea of a warm, doughy, flaky American-style biscuit to accompany my afternoon tea. With a slight sweetness to the batter and dressed with melted honey butter or herb-infused ghee, a freshly baked biscuit sounds absolutely delightful. After all, a biscuit fits somewhere between a scone and a muffin, both of which also make great tea pairings. 

Southern Inspired Tea

For our afternoon tea, how about something lightly sweet to pep up the remainder of the day? Drawing inspiration from the South’s sweet tea, we can modify the sweetness for our own afternoon tea with a number of potential add-ins. 

I like to occasionally use a sweetener in any of my teas except for green tea, but it’s truly the tea drinker’s choice of what tea to sweeten and the scale of preferred sweetness. 

Some of the many options available include liquid honey, a sugar cube, or the Plum Deluxe Honey Dust. There are many calorie-free options as well, the natural stevia leaf being one that I enjoy. 

Chocolate Hazelnut Dessert Tea is a wonderful choice for our afternoon tea and biscuits affair. Chocolate and hazelnut is the epitome of food pairings and makes a delicious, lightly sweet tea on its own. The tea base is honeybush, used for its warm aromatics that blend eloquently with the cacao nibs. This lovely dessert tea with just a touch of sweetness will give your system the boost it needs to finish out the day and give your taste buds a real treat.

Glazed Strawberry Biscuits

Let’s get to the biscuits! I recently saw an amazing recipe for Strawberry Glazed Biscuits and quickly became a fan of the concept. The recipe called for fresh strawberries folded into a biscuit batter and finished with a sugar glaze. I couldn’t wait to try out my own version. 

I’m the type of baker who enjoys the creative baking process when it’s not too complicated. So, when I’m baking from scratch, depending on the amount of time I have to dedicate to the task, and to simplify things, I turn to a baking mix. 

I chose a basic Bisquick mix for my biscuit base and followed the recipe on the box with some modifications to duplicate the recipe I had seen elsewhere. Bisquick makes a gluten free version, too, which would make for a fun comparison to do at a later time. I added a splash of strawberry and vanilla extracts to my mix to give it a more robust flavor, and used half-and-half instead of regular milk. 

My freshly rinsed strawberries were chopped finely and then I pressed them between two paper towels to soak up any extra liquid so that it didn’t interfere with my biscuit batter. I folded them into the batter and then scooped out the prepared mixture into six healthy-sized servings on a parchment-lined baking sheet. 

They baked up just perfectly in the 450 degrees preheated oven, and 12 minutes later - voila! - biscuit perfection. The glaze came together nicely and I just eyeballed the amount I wanted to make with powdered sugar and the same half-and-half drizzled in, with a splash of strawberry extract here, too. 

The Perfect Breaktime

Overall, I would definitely recommend giving this a whirl the next time you want to whip up an easy-yet-fanciful afternoon diversion. It truly was simple enough to have a lovely table arrangement for just myself, and would be just as easy to whip up swiftly for a small gathering of tea-loving friends. 

Carving out time for ourselves to stop the busyness of the day and sit down to just relax and restore our energy is essential. And, spoiling ourselves with small treats like tea and a goodie makes those break times even more enjoyable. Don’t wait too long for your next afternoon tea, and enjoy!