Happy Sunday! Welcome to the second beautiful recipe from Claire at Chartresssansgluten.fr making delicious Double Chocolate Lychee Tea Fleur Du Sel Cookies (quite the mouthful!) using our Lychee Black tea.

Thank you once again Claire for your masterful recipe. These cookies are so moreish!

Scroll down for the full recipe and check here for the previous Raspberry and Matcha Financiers recipe.

To get away from the hustle and bustle...

That's why I like drinking tea so much, and preparing homemade sweets to taste it: for the inner calm it brings me. Even if I convince myself that it is to produce less waste, to become an expert with the ingredients, to have fun, and to teach my child the true taste of things... and the taste of true things!

I come back to it, like a beacon, to silence the voices, mine and those outside, to go out for a moment behind my little inner house, to sit on the steps, to contemplate and smell, to breathe a deep sigh of relaxation and satisfaction.

Maybe it's a substitute for the garden I don't have? The contemplation of nature that is missing from my daily life. It is perhaps the childish and undisciplined practice of a form of meditation (and a little addiction to carbohydrate-rich moments... obviously).

In this joyful sip of tea alternated with a piece of cake, in the perfume that fills the house, in the comfort, even superficial and devious when it is sweet, in this ephemeral moment, there is a way to calm everything: our rhythm, our breath, our worries. To pause everything and relax, at least in the mind.

There is also a little bit in homemade pastries, this archaic, unadmitted need to be the one who pampers and nourishes, to continue to be a mother. And there is the power of my own childhood, of those moments at tea time when my mother - without being a seasoned pastry chef - sometimes prepared a caramel, a charlotte, a floating island or shortbread.

These moments are the sweetness of life itself, peace, the eternal offering to this little-known and underestimated paradise when it existed.

I apologize in advance for quoting only one fragment, and thus removing the most poignant part of this sentence. I hope you will read it in its entirety.  (From Swann's side)

“But when from an ancient past nothing remains (...) alone, more fragile but more lively, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste remain for a long time (...)”

Marcel Proust

Proustian Spring

Le Printemps Proustien (which celebrated the Goncourt prize obtained 100 years ago by Marcel Proust for "Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" -this, for me, was the occasion of beautiful meetings and experiences thanks to Chartres Tourisme and the Agence départementale et régionale du tourisme) has just ended in Eure et Loir. Even if the event attracted me because it was literary, I would never have thought I would be so touched by the rereading or listening to certain passages, by an author whom I declared not to love beyond a virtuoso page. Chiseled prose, with a perfect ribbon, which once spoke little to me.

Proust, in my memories as a high school student, they were pieces of bravery, a lot about life in society... and idle talk! This time I discovered a new attraction, what we would now call mindfulness. I found a lot of greediness to express the emotional charge, and sensuality... a hymn to tenderness, a sweet melancholy, humble (contrary to appearances) and reassuring in a world that runs head down.

I saw in him an ally, a resistance fighter, in the face of a general current that praises progress, utility, haste; where contemplation, and especially nostalgia, seem to be a lethargy competing with action, an emotional trap...

Nostalgia, an aesthetic form tolerated, but more often perceived, if it is a trait of character, as a sentimentality that prevents progress.

This slowness and desire no longer frightens me today. I cherish them. I recognize myself in it.

Lychee black

I will come back to talk to you about Marcel and the charming places to discover around him, but for the moment, as promised a few weeks ago, I share with you the recipe for these cookies born out of my love for the Lychee Black tea of Teaura house of which I have already told you! (In this article)

Originally from southern China (Yunnan), it is harvested in spring and then dried directly with the fruit. Its notes are very floral but it also has a discreet taste of honey, and even grapes, which give freshness and a subtle character to the chocolate.

You can add a few nuts to it, as I did here. And to make sure your cakes soak up the scent, slip some tea into the box! Happiness finally! This tea I breathe it in, eat it, drink it, roll it under my fingers... I even want to make bags of this tea to scent my wardrobe!

RECIPE

Tender cookies - double chocolate, tea & fleur de sel

For about 12 pieces of cookies:

• Melt 60g of quality organic butter or margarine (100% vegetable and without palm oil) in which you will let tea infuse for a few minutes... Then add 200 g of dark chocolate special pastry to let melt gently.
• In another bowl, whisk 2 hen eggs (which run!) and 120g. brown sugar, then add the chocolate and butter mixture, and add 110g. rice flour with 1/2 teaspoon of fleur de sel and 1/2 teaspoon of raising powder (gluten-free)
• Add 100g of dark chocolate chips or (even better!) knife cut dark chocolate.
• Place the dough in the fridge if it is too liquid (it should not be spread on the baking grid) but not too long so that the chocolate keeps a smooth and shiny appearance!
• On a grid covered with parchment paper, place the balls of slightly flattened dough, and decorate them with chocolate chips or pistoles (50 g) of one or two nuts or pecans per cookie, according to your taste.
• Bake for 9-10 minutes (depending on size) at 160°C on a rotating heat. Cookies should crack, but stay half-baked inside. They should then be allowed to cool well before being handled. When they are still barely warm, crumble on top a few tea leaves and then flower of Guérande salt.

Have a beautiful weekend! 

Claire