Dried Orange Garland Tea

It is traditional at Twelfth Night celebration to eat any edible holiday decorations- you can imagine that long ago when citrus (and food in general) was more rare that eating these expensive items was just common sense in addition to bringing a close to the holiday season. This is also the date many feel that holiday decoration in general should come down. For us, that often means that I let the kids try to eat their fossilized gingerbread houses (which I think is gross, but they love) but this year I wanted to do something a little more interesting. When I made my citrus garland tutorial I was very intentional in including that after use as decorations, the slices could be made into tea. I decided that using dried orange slices felt very in line with the sentiment of using up edible decorations and this time of year I am pretty done with sweets. This tea is packed with vitamin c and just what you need to close out the holiday season.

Dried Orange Garland Tea

I prefer black tea myself, (I use english breakfast) but I use hibiscus for the kids. It makes the finished tea super red and tangy. (The one on the right is hibiscus and the one of the left is black tea- which is still pretty sunny!) If you don’t have dried hibiscus on hand any of the herbal “zinger” type teas contain it and will work brilliantly.

Ingredients:

• 3-5 dried orange slices
• 4 cups water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• a few whole cloves (these could be from a garland too!)
• a pinch of dried rosehips (these bring more vitamin c to the party)
• dried hibiscus or black tea

Method:

Put the oranges, water, cinnamon, cloves and rosehips in a pot. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer.

Simmer for 20 minutes uncovered and then strain the liquid into mugs and add your tea bags/ balls. Steep for a few minutes and then add honey to taste.

You can pop one of the oranges in as a garnish- and they will be miraculously rehydrated by this point.

You can throw everything left– spices and orange slices into a simmer pot and use them a third time!

*We all like milk in our tea, but we found that the citrus curdled dairy milk. My oat milk was fine though so I’d stick to non-dairy if you are a milky tea person.