Hibiscus tea is caffeine-free and it bears no resemblance to black tea. So, just what is hibiscus tea?

I’ve tried baking with tea before, but I couldn’t get the tea flavor to come through strongly enough. I’ve tried:

• Grinding tea and putting it directly in the batter. This doesn’t release the tea flavor and people don’t like finding leaf bits in their cupcakes.
• Steeping the tea in milk and using the tea-infused milk. I imagine that this could work, but not all recipes contain milk – and if they do, it’s not always enough to strongly affect the cupcake flavor.
• Steeping tea bags in butter. The butter boiled, the flavor never changed, and the tea bags disintegrated. People like pieces of tea bag in their cupcake far less than they like leaves.

So what’s the best way to bake with tea?

I learned the secret to tea-infused baked goods from a now-defunct blog post by Robert Wemischner (author of Cooking with Tea [paid link] and The Dessert Architect [paid link]) on T Ching (I love the name!). The trick is…