Fangirls, as you might know from the article I posted a few weeks back, I love me some iced tea. I’ve tried so many different brands, I figured the only one left I hadn’t tried was my own variety. So I decided to give it a go, and realized that not only could this save me a lot of money, that it was fucking delicious. Tell Mario to only come to the rescue if he’s got a pitcher of this in tow.
It was also pretty easy. It takes a bit of time, I found it was best to make it sort of in the back ground while working on some other things around the house. This recipe also has a number of variables that you can switch around for your own drinking pleasure. You’ll only need a few ingredients to make it:
Black Tea
Peaches
Sugar
Water
The amount of each of these things is up to you, as are the tea and the fruit themselves. As a bit of a disclaimer, I made the syrup & iced tea to be separate things. So, all of the syrup that is made from this recipe doesn’t go into the iced tea that is made. I made iced tea, and then a syrup to add to individual glasses. With that, lets get to making some tea.
When people make iced tea, I think their first mistake is the tea they’re using. People usually opt for a cold brew tea, or a cheap Lipton. What’s best to do is to choose a really good regular hot brew tea. My favorite is Red Rose brand black tea. It’s a great tea with a robust & smooth flavor that I drink daily. Though my obsession with coffee consumes my life, I do drink a cup of hot tea almost daily. So with that said, I took 5 tea bags and steeped them in 4 cups of hot water for a few hours. Optimally, I steep the tea overnight. I stick by the one tea bag per cup of water rule, and then add one bag for the “pot” so to speak. You can adjust how much tea you use or how long you steep it based on how strong you like your tea.
While that was doing it’s thing, I started my peach simple syrup. There’s a few different theories about the sugar to water ratios of simple syrup, but it really depends on what you’re using it for. For beverages & stuff like this, a thinner syrup is good, so I used a 2 to 1 ratio of water to sugar. Add those to a medium sauce pan, turn onto medium heat, and stir to dissolve the sugar.
Then, add in 2 cups of fresh, diced peaches. Stir to combine everything and then bring the mixture to a boil.
Once its boiling, simmer it for a while to get the flavors really going and things start to cook down. I think I let mine go for about a half hour, until I could really smell the peach. I did a few taste tests too.
Then, strain that all through some cheese cloth into a bowl, container, or bottle. Something that can hold the syrup and that you can store it in to add in to the tea by glass. I put mine in a mason jar, as you can see the syrup turned a lovely pink color. A flavor truly fit for a princess.
This made a good amount of syrup, nearly 16 ounces. So I can easily put this in the fridge and save it to add to individual cups of iced tea, or to cocktails or desserts. Simple syrup is good for up to three months!
So, once my tea was all ready. I added it to carafe will a few wedges of lemon. Though this is peach tea, I find that all iced tea is good with a little lemony kick. I don’t add ice to whatever container I’m storing my tea in, it too easily gets watered down just sitting there in the fridge. I prefer to just pour the tea over ice per glass that I have.
So, now that both thing are ready, just stick them in the fridge until you’re feeling a bit thirsty. That way, everyone can add syrup to their cup and adjust to how sweet they want it. Let me tell you, Fangirls, this is so damn tasty. My days of buying peach tea are over. This was so cheap, easy & delicious, I plan to just keep a pitcher of tea & a container of syrup in my fridge all summer long. What’s great is you can change this around however you want, just keep the same ratios. You can use green tea instead of black, or raspberries instead of peaches, whatever your heart desires. I think I’m going to stick with the peach though, it’s definitely a winner.
Drink up, Fangirls!
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