My swap package from Veronica came to me today and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. It is cold and rainy here because of the threatening hurricane. I live farther inland on the east coast, but it is not that far from the coast so our entire area has been prepped for a big storm. So far, nothing has been too huge here even though the schools have been canceled for today.
The dry leaf smells wonderful! It smells like sweet candied lemons. Once the tea is brewed, the smell tones down a little bit on the candy front and you can clearly tell it is a tea blend. Now it smells more like warm lemon sugar. The liquor is a lovely dark amber and the leaves were fun to watch steep in my press because they danced in the hot water.
Now comes the moment of truth: the taste test. Now, I have never had gooey butter cake so I don’t know what exactly that is supposed to taste like. The first thing that really hits me is the tea base. It tastes like a lighter black tea. I can really taste the lemon and lemon in my tea is something I don’t particularly enjoy if it isn’t offset by anything else. But I can tell there is something else in here that is mixing with the lemon.
I added a teaspoon of sugar to my cup and tried again. I am getting a more dessert-like flavor now and I am getting the gooey-cakey feeling that is more like a lemon bar than anything. If anything, I want more lemon in there to be more like a sweet-tart lemon bar and this is coming from the person who doesn’t care for lemon tea! How ironic.
I poured out a sample of the tea into a cup and mixed that with just a drop of milk. Regular milk because I didn’t want my almond milk to change the flavor profile too much. With milk I now get “CAKE!” but I think I like it without the milk better.
The rest of my mug is still hot and slightly sweet. I could probably have put two teaspoons of sugar in it while it was still full and have been satisfied, but I wanted to explore this cup. This is an interesting tea and I am very glad I got the chance to try it. I have a feeling that this might make an awesome sweet iced tea and because of the very generous sample size that Veronica sent to me, I will get to try it iced too!
The one flavor I think this is missing from the cup that would have rounded it out more is a little bit of vanilla. But that is probably me being picky.
