A long while back Marc and I discussed getting tea favours done up for us at a local shop. So off shopping we went, and disappointed we came back. They could make the favors for us, but at $2.75 a piece for 200 people it was a good $400 above our budget.
A few months later my mom and I were out shopping at Staples when we stumbled upon Brides Magazine favor boxes in the clearance section. (Apparently Brides Magazine is good for something!) Four boxes of fifty favour boxes on clearance for $9.95! Those boxes found themselves in storage while we entertained the idea of making our own tea. We had made tea for Christmas gifts, and while that tea wasn’t high up in the flavor department, we figured we could make a new recipe that would be pretty top notch.
$60 and a heck of a lot of ingredients for loose leaf tea later — introducing our “Berry White” tea. This recipe makes approximately 100 favors of three tablespoons of tea (that will usually make one full tea pot):
What you will need:
- 2lbs dried cranberries, chopped
- 2lbs dried strawberries, chopped
- 1lbs loose leaf pomegranate white tea leaves
- 10 cinnamon sticks, broken up and then thrown in a blender to be “chopped”
- 3 full scoops of whole cloves (sorry I eyeballed these ones, it was the small scoop)
- 2 full scoops of whole allspice
- 2 scoops of star anise
Take all the ingredients, except for the star anise, and mix them by hand until it feels like everything is well integrated. After you spoon the tea into the favor container add one star anise to the bag or box. Pretty simple stuff!
The tea is pretty nice and has a nice sweet end on it. Only brew white tea for three minutes, as any longer will end with a bitter note.
By our calculations, we ended up saving $390.20 by DIY-ing our own loose leaf tea favors!
