Mmm! I just finished baking some Maple Pecan cupcakes from scratch and my whole house smells heavenly now: nice and sweet and mapley. I’m resisting the urge to eat half a dozen of them right now in one sitting – and so I thought I’d try this out to maybe curb those cravings a little bit.
So, my local Safeway carries basically any Stash tea you can name (which is awesome since Stash is my favourite bagged tea brand) – so earlier in the week I pulled up the Stash website and had my roommate look through and pick out a tea he wanted to try. For whatever reason he seems to like drinking teabags – the loose leaf I have seems to slightly overwhelm him. Also, in part I think maybe he feels less guilty drinking the bagged tea because he knows it’s less expensive and there’s less risk of him “ruining” or wasting leaves from something higher quality. I guess that’s thoughtful of him.
Anyway, this is the tea that he picked out, much to my frustration. It’s not so much the tea itself that frustrates but more how contradictory he is. He keeps telling me that he hates chai teas and he hates black tea – and yet those are basically the only teas he drinks. Urgh. He thought the vanilla would be nice and creamy in this though – so since the box was only three bucks I picked this up for the both of us to try: my treat (he’s basically broke – in fact his Dad is paying his half of rent this month, although he got a job a few days ago working in the restaurant of one of the chefs who teaches him at Siast, so in a week or two he should be on his feet again).
My pick out of the Stash bagged teas I picked up was the Strawberry Pomegranate I had this morning. Even though it was odd this morning because I wasn’t expecting it to have rooibos, I think it would be really well suited for times I am actually craving a rooibos blend.
Back to this one, though! Dry, the bag smells primarily of cloves with some cinnamon and nutmeg. Not much else comes through, but I can’t blame it: damn that clove smell is INTENSE. Steeped in boiling water for 4 minutes, this one smells heavenly though. There are light notes of cinnamon, this kind of gentle nuttiness to the aroma, nutmeg, and a strong creamy vanilla smell that is almost as yummy as the smell of the baking in the house right now. I’m happy that, in the smell anyway, the cloves have slammed on the brakes.
I’m almost hesitant to take a sip of this one, because I’m going to be really disappointed if this yummy nutty, lightly spiced vanilla smell is drowned out by unnecessary amounts of cloves or ginger root in the taste. Oh well, better get it over with…
Hmmm… Mmmm… Well, there is clove. A pretty good deal of it, but there’s also a consistent vanilla creaminess to the blend with some gentle cinnamon notes and light nutmeg. The vanilla itself had a sort of buttery quality to it, and the mouthfeel of this is pretty thick and rich for a bagged tea. I’m pretty impressed. Combination of scent and taste is borderline heavenly. Next time I have this (and there has to be a next time) I’ll be adding in some milk and seeing if that does anything to tamper the clove and accentuate the creamy vanilla.
Even though I’m pretty sure his pick was uneducated and blind, I think Tre picked out a good one, and I’ll admit that it’s nice to have a black tea in stock that’s also decaffeinated.
Haha sounds like he picked out a pretty good one. Your cupcakes must be heavenly.