Cookie Dough

Wow – love at first sip!
My new Buttercream! :D It doesn’t have the same flavour notes as Buttercream, but it is naturally sweet like it (naturally as in no added sugar by me!) and it is delicious.

The first sip was an immediate reaction – oh my gah it tastes like chocolate chip cookie dough without the chocolate chips. That’s always my favourite part of cookie dough, smooth and sweet and buttery – yum!

I kept my tea bag in for about 10-20 minutes (I was in training) – I found that at 15 minutes (it didn’t get bitter at all) but it started to lose it’s signature cookie dough taste. At 5-10 minutes it shone and was great! So I say, don’t be afraid to keep the leaves in, but don’t use boiling water – experiment, smell and take sips as you go. Don’t put your leaves in and forget them for 10 minutes lol, everyone’s process is different!

On a different note, any “tea budget” has gone to Lush for the moment. How sad! At least I can get some DT with a small discount when I’m craving. Not that I don’t have enough tea, oi!

I go a little refresh/reload crazy when Steepster gives me the “someone forgot to turn off the kettle” message. “Click …damn…click…damn…click…argh!” whoa…easy there drama queen :P

In my recent trip to David’s Tea I bought a little sample of each of the winter collection teas that were in stock. Sadly some of the collection was not there – sold out I suppose? (When I saw some were missing, I let out a mental “Boooo!” but I filtered that out before it escaped my lips ~ lol). Luckily they had cookie dough. I’ve been so excited to try this one ever since I first heard about it. I’m happy to say that it lives up to the hype that I created in my head…mmm…Delicious! The walnut is an interesting ingredient. If I think “walnut” while I drink it, I can taste it plainly, but if I think cookie dough, the walnut magically melds with the rest of the ingredients and gives that end taste of a cookie.

This tea makes me think of when I baked my first cookie as a child. Yep, I said cookie, as in the singular. I think there was supposed to be enough dough to make a couple dozen cookies, but I was really little so my lack of stirring skills ensured that a good portion was wasted on the floor and the surrounding mixing area. I also sneaked some tastes of the dough before I was caught and told not to eat it, for fear it might make me sick. Finally, I crammed the dough balls so close together that it fused together to form “The Uber-Cookie”. My parents tried to warn me, but eventually gave up. As my friend says, “life lessons- you can’t teach that stuff”. I’m happy to report that my current cookie baking adventures go a lot better. I dump less of the dough on the floor, and I now get actual separate cookies. I must admit, I still occasionally sneak a taste of the dough…mmmm….yummeh!

05/01/2013
giant tea tasting party!

first i ran 6 miles in the graveyard with Regina and then we drank:
Tardis Blend
Red Velvet Cake
Banana Dream Pie
Guy of Gisborn
Cookie Dough
Santa’s Secret
Buttered Rum

then Audrey came over and i gave her tea samples to take home and we tasted these:
Bilbo Brew
Troika
Bouquet of Flowers
Movie Night
Smaug
Kusmi Caramel
Kusmi Anastazia

and then as i waited for the pizza order to arrive my boything and i drank:
Jane Austen Mafia

oh my this one is a bit strange, in a good way. i almost smell a little alcohol on the nose?
it intrigues me!
and that means it’s going to keep me interested.
watching vintage sherlock.
getting into bed early for an early run tomorrow.
happy warm tea night.

Ok, sheng puerh experiment comes to a close for the time being, and now I am going to something that is hardly tea, hahaha.

I have been meaning to drink this since I got it about 2 weeks ago and I’ve just kept putting it off. I was even sitting here thinking, what was it I wanted to try? Ahh yes, cookie dough!

I was surprised by the temperature recommendation but I used 195 instead because I can.

There is one massive walnut that made its way into this cup so I’m hoping I like it. Walnut just doesn’t do it for me in tea, though the other times I’ve had walnut it’s been black teas so maybe this is different.

Man, this is what I wish that Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea tasted like! Except that this is definitely chocolate chip cookies. Dough, not so much. It smells like dough but it definitely tastes baked.

As it cools, the chocolate chip taste comes out a lot more. But through and through this is cookies, for sure. No need to even sweeten it.

Held off trying this until now since a) I’ve been trying to cut down on tea spendage and b) thought this would be too sweet. Lately, most newer DT blends seem too over-the-top sweet for me.

But once I smelled it, I couldn’t say no. It really does smell like cookie dough. The caramel in this reminds me of Salted Caramel, but this blend is a lot smoother and daintier.

The scent of the steeped tea is like milk chocolate and brittle. I swear I can also smell a little rolled oats in there too. Smells chewy!

This works with the white tea. There’s a hint of chocolate and gooey caramel. I swear this tastes sweeter when prepared in a pot than pouring it into my Timolino.

I was seriously considering buying more after finishing up the 20g but I don’t know. It’s great but not ZOMG NEED MOAR great.

Dry Leaf Nose: Sweet, with a hint of coconut and fresh apple.

Liquor: Golden brown and clear.

Flavour: A rich cookie dough flavour, augmented by a walnut finish.

Heck yes, it’s new tea time! Finished grinding all my asparagus samples (well… technically there are some left, but they either rotted in the freeze-dryer and are suspect, or are extras from last year, soooooo…. I’m done!) and my treat was a trip to DavidsTea. A very expensive treat, as it turned out… 6 new teas, 26g of Earl Grey Cream & Gold Rush…. and a new sparkly black Timolino! Because I need to be able to take multiple teas with me at all times! (My Christmas list will include a Timolino-esque thermos that’s stainless steel and leakproof, but somewhat less good at holding the heat, so I can actually drink the tea I put in it…) Um, anyways. That was an expensive trip to DT.

Onto tea #1! When I first opened my bag of this one, I was hit by a very alcoholic, sweet-smelling aroma. Definitely good, but nothing like Buttercream, and nothing like cookie dough. However, once steeped, the aroma of this one is almost exactly like cookie dough! When someone with a heavy hand was allowed to add the vanilla, haha. I’m getting a strong vanilla extract flavour here (which ties into the alcoholic aroma), but it totally does smell like raw chocolate chip cookie dough… minus the chocolate (maybe it’s more like raw sugar cookie dough?? I’m not sure; I don’t like sugar cookies).

Hmm. I’m not sure I like this one as much as I want to. It strangely almost tastes a bit stale in my mouth, which should be impossible since it’s a brand new tea, that I just bought! The aftertaste is quite nutty, which fits nicely, but this almost stale-ish flavour is throwing me off. I really want to like this…. perhaps I’ll let it cool down a bit more. The right tones are all here otherwise. That said, even if a bit of cooling (or a different brewing method, e.g. with cooler water as I would normally have done with a white, not near-boiling!) loses that stale flavour, this isn’t a huge hit for me. It’s ok, I’d drink it again, but it’s nothing like Buttercream IMO. Then again, I’m also not one of those people who is obsessed with cookie dough. And I don’t usually eat raw cookie dough. So I think this will be a hit with such people, just not me!

(It’s cooled down now and still has that stale note. I tentatively blame the high infusion temperature, so hopefully I remember to reduce it next time).

Thank you courtney for this sample. This tea does a good job of not being your typical white tea. However, it’s a little sweet for me. This does a good job of being sweet and cookie dough like.

…aaaand work interupts things. back to it!

I used 1.5 David’s Tea Perfect Spoonfuls for my Aqua-ovo.

The first thing that strikes me about the brewed leaf is the scent- it really does have a scent that strongly reminds me of cookie dough and transports me back to times were I have made chocolate chip cookies. I think that it smells like a mixture of vanilla extract and chocolate chips.

There’s an odd bland taste on the sip but this blooms into a very chocolate chip-like flavour. After taste really does taste like cookie dough. I can mildly detect the white tea in this one. I’m not sure if the slight astringency mixes well with the light sweetness and chocolate chip flavour. I usually associate that strong type of flavour with a dark chocolate and thicker cocoa tea. I’m detecting a little bit of nutty taste (from the almonds and walnuts) which compliments the flavour profile. As the tea cools, I am detecting more of the caramel taste coming through from the cream caramel pieces.

Overall, this tea has a nice rounded flavour.

I was able to try a sip of this tea cold at the end of my cup. It was very sweet and chocolatey. This may be a good tea to have iced.

The second infusion (7 minutes) is noticeably dilute in flavour but still carries an overall pleasant taste profile. The cocoa taste is still quite strong at the end of the sip. The sweetness is still present.

Thank you reasoned_melody for my 24g pouch of this tea. Cookie dough is one of my favourites and I have wanted to try this for a while now.

I opened the pouch and took a sniff not really knowing what to expect but I was greeted with a chocolate odour. I take it these cookies are chocolate based then? :) Chocolate chip maybe. The mix looks like your standard white tea (similar to peony) but with a few twigs and delicious sweet extras.

A 7 minute steep is a fairly long time but I am sat here eagerly waiting with what little patience I have. So far I can note the colour is lightly honeyed (yellow and orange) with a chocolatey and somewhat baked essence that is becoming stronger and stronger. It really is like cookie dough but more store bought than home made.

The flavour is interesting at the beginning. It’s creamy and sweet with a touch of being nutty and chocolatey. There is deffinately some sort of baked flavour there (different to an Oolong but also in a way rather similar). The chocolate flavour is more of the cocoa nibs so it resembles a cup of hot chocolate rather than a chocolate bar or real chocolate chips but it helps to sweeten the mixture so it’s not too bad.

I don’t like that this contains artificial flavouring. Surely if you create a blend correctly you will find you don’t need to add artificial extra’s? Butiki do a great job using natural flavours as do many other companies and I imagine it can’t be too difficult as long as you test it properly and have the passion to create.

I’m not so sure I would pick this cup out of a line up either. Put this tea amongst other chocolate based teas and it would be hard to differentiate the differences. Smell would be an easier job than taste I think.

Overall it’s a fairly average tea and I was hoping it would be so much more. Perhaps my standards were too high, as I said cookie dough is one of my favourite foods so perhaps my bar was held too high in advance? Either way this tea was nice but far from extraordinary.

It’s a bit weak for my tastes. Drinks like chocolate chip cookie dough with lots of chocolate chips. The scent of the dry leaves reminds me of chocolate liquor.

It’s best as a latte as that’s when the nutty ingredients and brittle flavour mix with the dairy to give an overall impression of clumpy, sweet, dough. When I went to visit my parents on the mainland I added some caramel toffee syrup to the latte and ended up giving the cup to my mother. She loved it.

Despite its light flavour, the tea is rich like its namesake. It’s Milky, sweet, nutty, and noticeably chocolate geared. It imitates raw cookie dough very well but I’d rather eat the real thing.

Received in a sample swap. Thanks! This stuff was so yum. Tastes like cookie dough without much chocolate and I didn’t miss the chocolate one bit at all. Sampled with my family with a light desert and we all loved it. Steeped for 3 minutes first steep 5 minutes first steep. The chocolate was mildly there first steep and was definitely gone second steep. We actually preferred the second steep and probably should have tried to work in third steep.

Received this in a swap from reasoned_melody

Wanted to try this for a while, but with no DAVIDsTEA within a bussing distance I had to wait.
The dry leaves smell just like cookie dough…. mmmmmm
This tea is scrumptious. It tastes JUST like cookie dough with chocolate chips. How they do this with the ingredient list is beyond me. So freakin good!

I bought 50g of this today on impulse, even though I sorta promised myself to stop doing that in case I end up with more duds. I was shopping with sgoertz and I got caught up in all the excitement about all the new teas. (My original plan was to buy a shiny red tin full of Red Velvet Cake, which I did… but then I bought this and a sample of Pink Flamingo too! Guess I better stay away for at least a few weeks).

But today is not that day where I regret my impulse purchases. This is SO GOOD, and is totally worth the price DT charges for white teas. It smells like fresh baked goods coming out of the oven. It tastes…. mmmm…. it tastes like butter and chocolate and sugar wrapped up in warm caramel and melt in your mouth goodness. It leaves a bit of an odd aftertaste on your tongue – but it’s not unpleasant.

When I looked at the dry tea, I noticed there were a few walnuts in there. I mashed them up into little bits because I wanted the walnuts to be mixed more thoroughly in the blend. The leaves are pretty – all sorts of sizes and shapes! This is the second time I’ve had white tea (the first being Persian Apple) and I’ve been satisfied. Both blends have been heavily mixed with other things though, so I can’t say that I really know what a white tea tastes like.

I plan to re-steep this one over and over – at $10/50g I’m going to need to make this last!

SIDE NOTE: For those of you who shop at DavidsTea all the time, have you bought many of those $3 sample bags? The lady said that those are actually cheaper to buy than if we buy it from the shelf. Maybe it’s old stock? I grabbed the Pink Flamingo from there and I’m looking forward to trying it – 25g is perfect for sampling. I’ll have to keep an eye on how often they add teas to that section.

“Are you baking? And this early in the morning??” inquired my husband upon smelling this tea as he prepared for work…

“It’s tea, silly. Liquid cookie dough tea,” I reply and he goes about his morning preparations.

Yet another flavour my gluten-deprived tongue has been longing for; the taste of raw, unadulterated cookie dough right out of the bowl. Yes, there are gluten-free recipes, but currently my stomach does not appreciate chocolate as much as it should. So, I have been left wanting… until today!

When I heard that DAVIDsTEA was releasing this tea I knew I HAD to try it. Yes, all the cake teas are satisfactory and delicious, but if it comes down to cookies or cake? I’ll pick cookies almost every time. This tea does not disappoint! It’s sweet without sweetener added and no awkward stevia either. I can see myself going through this tea pretty fast… might just have to buy a tin.

I like this one, but I don’t love it. I had high expectations for it, because lets face it who doesn’t love cookies? But it is not as rich as other dessert teas and for me I don’t think that is a good thing.

It does taste like cookie dough, but to me it pales in comparison to the real thing. I had it as a sample at the store and didn’t like it, but I got some to have at home. In a latte it’s pretty good, but not as good as other dessert teas I’ve had from Davids.

I opened that bag and saw a whole walnut in the bag. That was very intriguing. After trying the popcorn one yesterday, I was pretty excited to try this one. I wasn’t so sure I’d be a Davids fan as I really don’t like Teavana, but I’m really enjoying their stuff. This tea did not disappoint. And I have never liked chocolate in teas. I’ve tried all kinds and I just don’t enjoy that flavor mixed with tea. Maybe I just don’t like chocolate mixed with black tea, who knows? Regardless, I like this one. I brewed this up and sat outside and watched the Big kId, the Little Man, and the Bean go on hikes in the back yard. All was right in the universe for a few minutes.

Thank you Ne14t for this sample. It is so good! It literally tastes like I just shoved a piece of chocolate chip cookie dough in my mouth. This may be my new favorite desert white tea. So good!

It definitely lives up to the name of Cookie Dough. It’s wonderfully sweet and soothing on a cool autumn day. It reminds me a lot of the “Buttercream” tea of the past but more richer in flavor nuances. Especially with the toasty warm feeling that comes from taking in the delectable steam. Well worth the wait and the anticipation felt when I first heard about this release.

The wonderful Cavocorax sent me some of this to try, and so I was very excited to make a cup of it tonight; it’s so rainy and cold out. (Still no snow here, though!) First taste: hnnnnng chocolate. It’s sooo chocolatey and vanilla-y and yes I am making these adjectives because I can.

Definitely one of my favourites. _ I will totally be ordering some with my next DT order~