Top tea-flavored baked goods for 2025

22 Apr 2025

In 2025, consumers aren’t just consuming tea from a cup. It’s served in cocktails, patisserie, baked goods and savoury dinners. Hard seltzers (alcoholic, flavored carbonated water) are making way for hard ice teas and foodies are poaching pears, chicken and even salmon in tea. Of course, baked goods also lend themselves perfectly to the application of tea flavors.

We’re spilling the tea on the most popular pastries and snacks to try this trend with.

Baked goods steeped in flavor

According to our semantic AI technology that monitors online consumer behaviour, the interest for the application of tea flavors across the bakery, patisserie and chocolate industry has gone up 12% over the past 3 months. Tea is popular for plant-based and fusion applications, as well as in combination with sour tastes, like the classic tea and lemon combo. Over the past year, the mentions of tea in combination with sourdough have even increased by 34%. Probably because online sourdough bakers are experimenting with loaves such as London fog, chai tea, dates and pistachio or strawberry matcha.

In the broader functional food category, we are seeing product launches for increasingly specific occasions and audiences. These three are perfect examples:

Tea-infused cakes

The tea resurgence in America comes from the popularity of period dramas such as Bridgerton, says IHG Hotels beverage director Katherine Wojcik on Martha Stewart. The characters on those shows are constantly sipping on cups of tea, their pinkies neatly pointing up. No wonder tea is a popular flavor for cakes, especially retro-style cakes with intricate piping. This one by Vegan Treats is London fog flavored, based on the drink that combines Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and a sweetener such as vanilla syrup.

Tea-infused madeleine

Matcha, darjeeling, brown butter chai, bergamot, most classic and trendy tea flavors work well with the shell-shaped madeleine sponge cakes. But most popular right now is the traditional Earl Grey madeleine that often pops up on TikTok. No wonder, since we’re seeing a 176% increase in online mentions of tea-infused madeleines.

Tea-flavored cookies

Earl Grey sugar cookies are an evergreen classic, but now we’re also seeing matcha and white chocolate cookies, rooibos cookies and the dirty chai oatmeal cookies by Ot’s. Those combine Indian chai with cinnamon, star anise, clove, cardamon and ginger with espresso to make it ‘dirty’. The newly released Waffle Cookies by TeaFusions consists of a whole range of fusion tea flavors, such as black tea & currant, Earl Grey & passion fruit, and white tea & peach.

Tea-flavored cheesecakes

While cheesecakes might not seem the most obvious choice for a tea application, the combination of the two is very popular. Frank Hu, known from Netflix’ 'The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge' got over 39K Instagram likes for his Thai Tea Cheesecake, flavored after the popular drink with strong black tea and condensed milk. But matcha is a popular option as well, as this basque chocolate matcha strawberry cheesecake by Koi Dessert Bar shows.

Tea-infused muffins

Caramel chai, blueberry Earl Grey and matcha white chocolate are a few of the tea-infused muffin options that are in demand right now. But there’s also a lot of potential for healthy tea-infused muffins to eat as a quick and convenient breakfast food. These hazelnut and rooibos creations by Jordan Rondel give an idea of what those could look like.

Tea-infused pastries

The interest in tea-infused pastries has gone up by more than a quarter (28%), and the range of options available is very wide. From danishes with Earl Grey orange custard to high-end Earl Grey glacé. Here, you can also see the fusion aspect of this trend at play. Think of the combination of France and Japan in a matcha Paris-Brest. There’s also a lot of potential for pastries that make use of the popular Taiwanese brown sugar bubble tea.

Tea-flavored eclair

Eclairs with tea flavors are another consumer favorite, which is proven by a 97% increase in online interest for this creamy treat. While a lot of the interest is going towards matcha, there’s plenty of opportunity to experiment with other tea flavors such as this Thai Iced Tea creation by Supermoon Bakehouse.