I was randomly craving wintermelon tea late at night, but the nearest boba store was already closed, as were the Asian grocery stores, and as much as I would love to make wintermelon tea from scratch, I neither had a fresh wintermelon to do that nor the patience – for context, wintermelon tea is made from a dark brown sugar syrup that is steeped with wintermelon, and cooked down for hours. It is a very time-consuming process, but I wanted a brown sugar-milk tea-type of drink, especially since it was the summer and I was trying to keep cool. Apparently I only ever made one drink post on this blog(I could have sworn I have done more, but maybe it was archived/deleted Instagram posts), so that was another indicator that I might as well make and post a milk tea-type of recipe! In terms of how I came up with this specific recipe, I had a bunch of Assam tea bags lying around, and I purchased a Costco-sized bag of medjool dates, so I figured, why not combine the two? The beautiful thing about dates is that they provide a molasses-like sweetness, similar to the wintermelon syrup, so I figured blending the dates into the Assam tea, which is earthy, malty, and a little bitter, would result in a very pleasant combination! Spoiler alert: it did. I also used a bit of miso paste, because I love the hint of salt it gives to the milk tea, since a lot of the time with drinks, they usually aren’t seasoned, therefore they can be a little light in the flavor department. Adding the miso is a quick and easy answer to that. I also used soy bean milk since that adds another pleasant background sweetness to the milk tea, and because I recently became lactose intolerant this year(damn you, genetics, I almost escaped the curse), so I wanted to avoid the consequence of drinking anything with lactose in it.

When it comes to this recipe, the main thing is that you will need a blender. The dates need to be rehydrated in warm water, but in this case, we are simultaneously rehydrating the dates and steeping the tea into the water at the same time, which checks two processes off at once! The dates are then pureed with the freshly steeped tea and white miso paste to form the sweetened tea portion of this milk tea recipe. I prefer white miso for this particular application because it is pleasantly sweet and not super salty, making it the most dessert-friendly miso paste to use, compared to the saltier red or yellow variations. Soy bean milk is then added to form the milk tea, but you can also use whatever milk you want – if you aren’t cursed with later in life lactose intolerance like I am, go for the cow stuff. The nice thing about using the soy bean milk, besides it being a nostalgic flavor that I personally adore, is that it makes this recipe 100% vegan. That’s right, no animal products whatsoever in this milk tea recipe, and yet, the flavor is so robust and the texture is so creamy from the pureed dates and the soy bean milk that you would not even notice that this recipe, despite being called “milk tea”, does not actually contain any cow’s milk. And no, I am not trying to support any pro-vegan agenda here. It just so happened that all of the ingredients came together for this to be completely vegan and gluten-free. Either way, you can also add other mix-ins to this, like boba or grass jelly, just to give it the true boba milk tea-drinking experience!

Makes 3 servings:
1 cup water(or you can use 4oz water and 4oz ice if you want to expedite this recipe)
4 bags Assam tea leaves
10 medjool dates, pitted
1/4 tsp white miso paste
1 cup soy bean milk

In a covered pot, bring water, Assam tea, dates, and miso paste to a simmer on medium heat. Simmer for 10 minutes then allow the liquid to fully cool – if you are using ice in the recipe, add it here since that will bring down the temperature faster. Remove the tea bags from the pot, straining out as much liquid as possible. Transfer the remaining contents of the pot to a blender, with the milk, and puree until smooth. Optionally, you can pass everything through a cheese cloth to remove any chunks of date that may have not been blended in thoroughly. Keep the milk tea refrigerated until time to serve.