Matcha time! My friend came over and had tea with me today, and before she left she was lamenting about how much work she needed to do when she went home. I suggested that she try a matcha latte and see if that gave her a boost of energy. It must have worked, or it just tasted really great, because she is texting me right now picking what flavor she is going to buy, what size, what flavor level. I told her that picking the flavor is the hardest part for me because there are so many tempting ones.
This review will be about my latte, however, not hers! You can get the matcha right here:
http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/belgium-chocolate-matcha.html
I bought this one in Robust flavor level to mix with peanut butter to see if I could get a Reese’s peanut butter cup flavor, but I also wanted to try this one by itself as a hot cocoa substitute.
For this particular latte I made it the lazy way. I poured one cup of milk into a two cup Pyrex measuring cup. I added a spoonful of Turbinado sugar, which I am finding goes really well with the lattes. (I have to consume it all because I tried it in the kids’ drinks and they swear it tastes different from other sugar and they don’t want it in their drinks!)
When the milk was hot I used a plain kitchen strainer to sift 1/2 teaspoon of matcha into the cup. Then I just whisked it with a regular Kitchenaid brand metal whisk. I got a good froth, I suppose because it is milk instead of water. That helps!
This tastes good and creamy. I had to add extra milk because it was a little strong and you don’t want to add TOO much of the flavored matcha. The taste suffers. The good thing is that means you can use less and make MORE matcha lattes! It doesn’t taste exactly like hot cocoa, but it does taste like a hot drink that is chocolate, if that makes sense. This isn’t a kid’s kind of chocolate flavor, but rather a more adult one.
I do think I will order this in a milder flavor level next time, but for now I will just add more milk than usual to my lattes.
