Red Velvet Cake

Yummeh.

I was given a 5 minute break at work today, so I ran up to DT to try this tea! I had to!

It smells divine – reminds me of the other cake teas, but no stevia so it’ll have a different flavour.

As for flavour, my tea was steeped a little weak (not quite enough leaf in my to-go cup), but the flavour was nommy. Reminded me a lot of Birthday Cake, which is my favourite rooibos ever, but with more cakey, baked-good notes that I really enjoyed.

I will definitely get some to take home and steep my way (or the highway), then we’ll decide if I’ll get more. Until then – this sweet cup has made my evening :)

Thank you, darby, for saving me the time on this one, hahaha.

So admittedly I am all about the red velvet craze. I wanted to buy this just because of the name, not knowing what it actually tasted like. And thankfully darby sent me some to try and now I will not have to regret buying any amount of it, because it is a real bummer.

When I first tasted it, all I could taste was 52Teas’ Pancake Breakfast, but not as good. Not much chocolate, but at least it had that cakey taste to it, although then there was also a maple taste. I know you guys have tons of maple syrup up there in Quebec, DavidsTea, but it doesn’t go in Red Velvet.

Now, the only reason I can get down with immediate Christmas is this magnificent creation from Target. http://instagr.am/p/Rg5XZ8Ja4a/ Needless to say, I figured it’d be perfect to perk this tea up. There’s still a lot of maple notes, but at least now I’ve got chocolate.

Not impressed with this one, it is definitely not a substitute for a delicious slice of southern red velvet cake. And now I want to go to the place with the best kind…

Whoops! Looks like someone caved and got the special edition tin. I don’t even care for chocolate/Red Velvet cake, but there’s something about Red Velvet-flavoured or -scented stuff that draws me into its trap.

The dry leaf smells a lot like Birthday Cake, which right there is a mega win because I really like Birthday Cake, but wished the tea base was different. Voilà!

The liquor isn’t as red as I had expected, but at least there’s no trace of beets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of beets, but the thought of a chocolate Borscht tea doesn’t seem right.

The flavour is very similar to Birthday Cake, except of course, we’re dealing with a black tea base instead, which is luckily not astringent at all, and that maple-y flavour that is palpable in Birthday Cake is toned down here. This smells and tastes a little more like cake. When adding milk, it even smells a bit like cake batter.

It’s quite sweet. Not as sweet as Ice Cream Cake (whew, good), but it’s sweeter than Birthday Cake. I would advise against adding additional sweeteners. I wish the black tea base came out a little more, and that it weren’t as sweet, but I’ll happily finish my tin.

Backlogging from the weekend.

First of all, I have never tried red velvet cake. So I am not too sure what I am supposed to be tasting.

It is sweet and a bit chocolatey. It is nice and smooth. But I am not loving it. It is a little artificial tasting, I guess from all those sprinkles. I enjoyed chocolate cake much better than this one. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a cuppa!

I admit… I’m probably one of the few people in this world who isn’t obsessed with red velvet cake. In fact… I actually don’t know what it is, nor what the big deal is. I seem to recall my sister going all crazy about making red velvet cupcakes or something…

Anyways, cake tea! I liked the other cake teas, so why not try this one too!

The dry tea smells sickeningly sweet, like the other cake teas. No surprise there! I like sickeningly sweet sometimes though, so am not particularly concerned. I did note that I don’t seem to have white chocolate bits in my tea like in the picture… just red and white sprinkles and brown chocolate pieces.

Gross… this is another one that would probably have best been drank hot, as there’s a lot of scum around the edge of my cup, likely from the sprinkles. I’m really not a fan of sprinkles in my tea, to be honest. Actually, I don’t like sprinkles at all.

The aroma remains sickeningly sweet once brewed, but surprisingly, I’m not really getting that level of sweetness in the tea. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely somewhat sweet, and I can pick up chocolate and a kind of cakey flavour, but that’s about it. Wow. This one’s very “meh” for me. The aroma was making me liken it to Birthday Cake, and then the kick of chocolate to Chocolate Cake… but it seems to be a mixture of the aroma of BC plus the chocolate of CC… and not much in between. Perhaps it’s a consequence of going with only a short 4-minute infusion, but I doubt that. On the plus side, no astringency or bitterness, but the tradeoff may be flavour. Oh well! Glad I only picked up a bit of this one.

Finishing up my sample, apparently I haven’t done a tasting note yet. Out of the bag the aroma is very sweet, far more than I would prefer. It almost has a licorice smell which is not appealing to me at all. I get sickenly sweet icing from the aroma rather than red velvet cake. With some trepidation I steeped it for about three minutes. The steeped aroma is nearly as sweet as the dry and not really my cup of tea. I would like to be pleasantly surprised by this one but my expectations are not very high.

The tea steeps up a dusty rose and smells of buttercream icing, rich and sweet. I don’t like icing at the best of timea so smelling it in my tea is actually bad news. First sips yield moee white chocolate than icing and for this I am grateful. It is still quite sweet bur not as much as the smell suggests. I can taste the bkack tea occasionally but it is easily overwhelmed by the additives. Much too sweet for my taastes but woukd be good for someone craving a strong dessert tea.

Dry Leaf Nose: smells like cake! Rich, with a sweet background.

Liquor: deep brown colour – like a spice cake. Slightly cloudy.

Flavour: sweet cake flavour. Hints of chocolate and definite cream.

Ack! totally slipped my mind to log this the other day. And now I can’t recall the specifics, other than it was quite tasty and a little too sweet. BUT my cup was quite enjoyable without any additions and I even got a second steep out of it. Also, I’m not a huge red velvet fan as I prefer true chocolate cakes and it seems to be a vanilla/chocolate hybrid so I do enjoy it more than vanilla… however, this tea really managed to capture the “red velvet” experience for me, which I was not expecting at all. It’s not often a tea is so spot on to it’s moniker and those are the ones that tend to hook me for some reason unless I really dislike one or two ingredients(looking at choo carob, invading all the “chocolate” teas.
Ok so this review turned out to be much longer than I anticipated. Ah well, I’ll save my rating for the next cup just to be sure, as I’m wavering around the 82-87 mark.
Darn you Davids Tea!! coming out with another(rare) blend I really enjoy and am now tempted to stock in my cupboard even though I already have far too much…

Caramel-butterscotch-tasting sweetness. Does not have any unpleasant trailing after-taste. The black tea taste is blended well with the other flavours. Hint of chocolate near the end of the sip. Definite mellow-maltiness coming from the black tea and the chocolate. Tasting more like cake as it cools, especially in the after-taste. I am definitely tasting cake frosting as well. Creaminess as the cup cools.

The second infusion is noticeably weaker but still quite pleasant. The black tea taste is more apparent with only a light sweetness from the sugary ingredients. I doubt that this tea would do well past the second infusion.

When I found myself with a bit of free time after work, of course I wandered over to Davids to get this little beauty. I got a cup to go and as soon as we got home, I also made De make a pot for us to share. It’s so, so good, but a little weak. Both the in-store cup and the pot made at home were weak when steeped with our usual parameters, so you might want to give a bit of extra time. Still, it is delicious!

Cavocorax was so nice to send a package of samples and this is the first tea that I’m trying. I’ve been wanting to try this one for awhile, and just the smell of the dry leaves alone is living up to my expectations; very sweet and sugary like icing. There are cute little black and white chocolate chips and red and white sprinkles mixed in with the dry leaves. There’s just something about sprinkles that always makes me smile! The flavor is overwhelmingly sweet with a nice chocolatey finish. Adding just a touch of milk makes a very creamy and smooth cup. I’m loving this tea this morning and will be adding it to my shopping list. Thanks, Cavocorax!

-Dry blend has small black tea leaves and twigs, black and white chocolate chips and red and white sprinkles. Chocolate chips and sprinkles dissolve while steeping.
-Dry leaves smell like sweet red velvet cake. Tea liquor aroma is of rich chocolate.
-Tea liquor is a thick orange-yellow color with an oily sheen on top.
-Red velvet flavor with a lingering sweet chocolatey finish.
-Best with milk and sweetener.
-Excellent tea. Creamy and decadent.

When I saw pics of Red Velvet cakes coming out years ago I attempted to make it, and turned out badly. Too vinegary once, not red at all a few times (wrong food colouring) or messed up texture (wrong food colouring screwing up the liquid content). I’m more of a cookie and pie baker, not a cake baker!

DRY: Smells like cake! Lots of red sprinkles and, white bits and chocolate chips.

STEEPED: Light reddy brown black tea. Smells like cake batter. I thought it would come out more red. Bit of a clear film on top of my cup.

TASTE: Smooth, battery cake taste – rich cake, vanilla buttery with chocolate flavor. Quite sweet without adding any sweetener, Crap!
I sweetened what was left in the pot without tasting, and it’s pretty sweet and spot on toothy sweet cake. The black tea is subtle here, adding some depth. No bitterness or astringency. Do not sweeten this without tasting first!

COMMENTS: If you love Red Velvet Cake, give this a shot. Me? it’s really impressively tastes like cake, which is pretty cool – it be a fun tea to show people new to fun flavored teas. However, RVC is really chocolate cake with red colouring, ya know? I do think this is better than DT’s “Chocolate Cake” as it tastes closer to cake.

Oh crap. I’m scared to see my Steeper, I remember Chocolate cake made a gross mess in my Steeper from the sprinkles, this tea might be the same.

This is delicious. Very similar to Pineapple Upside down cake, but a little more chocolaty. I only ordered the small bag and I’m flying through this. Definite re-order. Yum.

This tea nails velvet cake on the head; it has the smell, the taste, and even the oily and creamy soft texture. It’s a bombardment of dripping buttery icing and sugared chocolate chips.

I can taste the semi-sweet and white chocolate chips distinctly-they remind me of the chocolate chips my mom used to put into her baking. They’re bad straight but are amazing when melted into baked desserts. The black tea is mostly buried beneath layers of cake and chocolate but, despite the oily qualities of the liquid, this tea is leaving my mouth somewhat dry. Maybe that could be attributed to the tea leaves?

I do like this a lot but the richness, coupled with the artificial tone from the sprinkles make it something that, like red velvet cake itself, I cannot eat drink all the time.

Cupcake flavoured tea, tea flavoured cupcakes….this tea would make Pinkie Pie proud!

It’s wayyy to late but I’m trying to memorize a whole bunch of information by tomorrow (not ideal, but it works for me somehow..).
I’m on an I’ll-eat-anything-to-stay-up-and-adam type mood and I’ve decided to cut myself off from eating everything random i can find. This tea is doing the trick. I’m gulping it down and am slightly worried I only got a 50g bag. I mean.. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about with red velvet cupcakes and whatnot.. but now. now I understand.
Sweet maple amid a creamy almost cream-cheese icing flavour on top of a cake.. a malty vanilla-cream cake.. . This is so so good. 100x better than birthday cake by DT. And I really really liked birthday cake (my go to gooey sweet cake tea)
I also added this double strong to my matcha instead of hot water.
So so good. <3

Hmm,I don’t think there are hardly any white chocolate chips or even chip pieces in mine. Go figure! Maybe the finished out the bottom of a larger tin when they filled up the 50g to send my way. No issue, I hadn’t noticed they were supposed to be in there!

The flavor really reminds me of Ice Cream Cake, which is one of my favorites. Other than a slightly less prominent icing flavor, this pretty much is Ice Cream Cake. It’s good, though I don’t know if I would order it again, simply because I have a large quantity of Ice Cream Cake on hand already.

Thanks to Alysha for this sample. Tasted delicious and cakey. Lightly chocolatey and not so much red velvet cake like but amazing none the less.

Mmmmmmmm……hug me again, Red Velvet Cake, you sexy beast…

I seem to back on a DavidsTea kick again, probably because it’s fall and they keep coming out with fall-related teas I can’t resist! I was pretty excited to try this one.

The smell is heavenly. It smells sweet and cakey, but maybe a bit more white chocolately than cakey. It’s one of those teas I can just sit and smell, kind of like those sweet vanilla cupcake candles.
The taste isn’t as cakey as the smell, which is common to davidstea teas, but with this one it works well. You can actually taste the ‘black tea’ (which is rare in these super flavoured ones of theirs I find) and still pick up a bit on the cakey flavour and absolutely very sweet. I’m glad I got this because it is a bit different than anything else I have in my cupboard right now.

Confession time: I ate all of the white chocolate chips before I even got a chance to steep it. So I have no idea if the white chocolate chips even change the flavour at all but I’m guessing not.

Here’s a picture, since it seems I’ve been doing that a lot lately:

http://instagram.com/p/PaK6i_ORx3/

This is another tea that I’ve heard so much about but haven’t been able to try until today. Thanks to Jackie T and our fantastic little swap. I’m still sipping away on these samples :-)

This is such a treat. I love the smell of this one dry and steeped. I see those little white chocolate pieces in the bag and I almost cheated and ate them out of the package. haha.

It has great cakey, chocolate, and cream cheese vanilla flavors swirling around in this cup. I could see friends who don’t usually like tea, loving this one too. After i sipdown some of my cupboard, I may have to order this to have it on hand as a dessert every so often. This could easily replace a real bake good with less guilt. haha.