Vanilla Black

I made these: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2013/04/17/apple-cinnamon-pull-apart-rolls-from-store-bought-to-homemade/ and as soon as they were out of the oven, all I could think of was having one (two, three!) with Harney’s Vanilla Black. I did, and oh. The tarry, sophisticated vanilla was just the foil for these delicious little breads.

It’s deja vu all over again! Made http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2013/04/17/apple-cinnamon-pull-apart-rolls-from-store-bought-to-homemade/ again, and there is nothing in the world I wanted to have more with them than Vanilla Black. That natural, dark vanilla flavor and good tea go so well with these little sweet breads. They are forever forged together in my mind…perfect pairing.

Finishing up the last of the small amount I had. I didn’t even have quite enough for a pot so I ended up with about 1 tsp Vanilla Black and 1 tsp Assam. The combo is actually quite nice. The vanilla is nice and strong without being over the top and the strong black tea is holding its own. If I ever end up with more of this, I will probably mix it half and half with a stronger black tea because I think it is much better this way.

I think I like this best hot and plain. Hmm…interesting considering my usual for black tea is automatically milk and possibly sugar.

Drinking this with just a tad of clover honey today and it is going great with my breakfast! It isn’t the best tea ever, but I do believe that it may be the best vanilla black I’ve had. So far, each time I’ve had this tea, the vanilla flavor has been strong and present, but also allowing the black tea to shine.

Next to Lapsang Souchongs, this is my youngest daughter’s favorite tea. I wanted to make a pot of tea that everyone in the house would like today. I had just made a batch of sugar cookies based on the America’s Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated recipe that is supposed to be nearly perfect. (It is.) Hubby got off work early – well, he got off slightly later than he was supposed to, but having just worked one 18 hour day followed by a ten hour day, it felt like “early” and I wanted to have a family tea time to celebrate. Plus, tomorrow is our annual Christmas shopping trip out of town and we are feeling festive!

This was the best choice for an “everyone will drink it” tea. I am not sure, but I think that for the first time, hubby drank a black tea without adding milk or sugar! If so, that is a huge deal. He drinks greens, oolongs, and puerhs without additions, but black tea ALWAYS gets at least some sugar!

Great tea, great cookies, a very nice day!

I rarely review this tea but a pot is made almost daily in this house. This is my youngest daughter’s favorite tea and she drinks it just about every day. I buy it by the pound, and still sometimes run out and have to borrow some from a friend while waiting for my order to come!

I served this yesterday as my never-fail back-up tea in case my new guests didn’t like the others. The young lady (age 12 going on 25) liked this one best. It is a very smooth base and the vanilla is well done, not artificial tasting. There were vanilla bean specks in the pot when we were done!

Delicious!

First day back to school in my house! We have lots of traditions, like the morning “bike ride to school” with their dad. They bike to the grocery store and buy apples, candy bars, and flowers for the teacher. We homeschool by the way! :). Then they bike home to find their grade level and teacher name posted on the door. LOL! And their dad often brings a bogus note as to why his kids were late for school, usually blaming their mother, ME! LOL!

This afternoon we were starving after stuffing all this new knowledge in our heads. A pot of vanilla black and some fresh pound cake hit the spot. Harney’s Vanilla Black stops me in my tracks every time. It is so smooth and delicious and is very affordable. It pairs great with so many different foods, and is good hot or iced.

Before my youngest daughter got hooked on Lapsang, and I mean strong stuff like Lapsang Souching Crocodile by Dammann Freres, I had to buy this tea by the pound or face ordering it with great frequency. This last bit has been sitting here for almost six months relatively untouched, but I still like it a great deal and served it with our pound cake at tea time today. It was a great pairing.

I am trying to sipdown a lot of my tea and have not purchased anything but matcha in a while, except that I did order the Verdant samples. When I have reduced my cupboard and samples quite a bit, I may be ordering more of this one because good vanilla tea is versatile, and this one is really good. I am toying with ordering Nina’s Thè des Anges as my cupboard vanilla, though.

This is a great tea for the price, and pretty much everyone I have ever served it to, likes it. It is less sweet and dessert-y than their decaf Vanilla Comoro, which I really must keep on hand regardless of the size of my cupboard.

We tried a new pitcher of this at “little tea party” today. It was cold brewed overnight and I added the simple syrup beforehand because the Tuesday crowd always adds sugar to everything! I thought it would simplify things to have it pre-sweetened. We also had homemade lemonade, made the way my mother taught me with simple syrup! At 99 degrees without accounting for the heat index, I thought it would be a great day to go iced! Also, youngest daughter was asked by a neighbor to hostess a tea party in HER home today, so I am without my kettle and five of my teapots.

This was very well-received. Everyone loved it and commented on how the vanilla flavor came through. And it does! It is so crisp and fresh. This is definitely going on my next Harney order by the pound. The 8 ounce tin isn’t going to do it! It was served with McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, Chocolate Flavor Kedem Tea Biscuits, and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

I am LOVING the cold brew method, though I know it doesn’t work for all teas….like that pitcher of decaf I just poured down the drain as undrinkable.

This is one I have to buy by the pound! It is one of the few teas that nearly everyone in the house loves, and guests love it, too. The tea base is very smooth, there is plenty of tea taste, and the vanilla isn’t artificial tasting. There is a nice balance of flavor here. This is not as sweet as Vanilla Comoro, also just called Decaf Vanilla at Harney and Sons, but the tea base comes out more. I love Vanilla Comoro but even the voice of love must confess that there is less flavor in the decaf tea base, though you can get around that by increasing the amount of leaf used.

This was pitted against Tower of London in a taste test with a non-tea-drinker today. She liked this tea, but preferred Tower of London. Youngest daughter can polish off 7 ounces of this in 6 weeks. Not kidding. It is good enough that I gave two ounces to a friend and that is all gone and I am under orders to purchase a pound for her. Vanilla Black is a nice daytime vanilla tea, and has a lovely decaf sister called Vanilla Comoro that is so rich, caramel-y, and decadent. Come to think of it, the same friend had me order her a pound of THAT about a year ago when she tried it at my house!

Tower of London and Vanilla Black were served with fresh, slightly warm chocolate chip cookies made from flour we had ground today from hard red wheat.

We did it. Well, mostly, youngest did it. After I bought two tins in rapid succession, I caved and bought her the one pound bag. It is now officially gone!

The last pot saved the day for us today, because something went badly wrong with the steeping of the tea I was really looking forward to and it was horrible! But this one stepped in with its lovely, smooth profile and rich vanilla taste. The final tea of tea party today, and the final pot until I order from Harney and Sons again. I bought youngest a tin of Rishi Vanilla a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t up to snuff in her opinion, so Harney it is.

Thank goodness I have some Vanilla Comoro to tide her over.

I made this one iced using the cold brew method. Youngest daughter loved it, but I found it to be a bit weak. I think that may be partly because I grew up on highly sweetened Lipton iced tea! (Mom was proud of how all the Yankees loved her tea and asked for it as soon as they walked in the door! It was practically syrup…we made a gallon a day in summer.) Also, I am using glass pitchers which are much colder than plastic, and the colder it is, the less you pick up on the flavor.

I just purchased the Bodum ice tea pitcher and was measuring my leaves based on the statement on the box that says it is a 40 oz pitcher. I decided I needed to check for myself. When I filled it modestly, keeping the water level below the strainer, it held about 48 ounces, so I really need to use more leaf.

I understand that when Bodum (and other manufacturers) say something is a four cup or six cup container like the Bodum French presses, they are referring to 6 ounce cups and not 8 ounce cups, but the box actually says 40 ounces. I am hoping that increasing the leaves will make it stronger for me. It was good, but I want a little more punch from it, and even though my youngest likes it this way now, I think she will like it even better when we get it just right. She is drinking so much Vanilla Black that I am going to have to start ordering it by the pound!

Scrubbing away on the furniture with Murphy’s, polishing with Old English, sweeping and reorganizing. GAH! Time to take a break for tea. Middle daughter had just baked a loaf of fresh buttermilk bread, so that paired with apple butter and tea became lunch!

I took my tea plain, and it is nice and smooth. The vanilla is light and doesn’t have that artificial taste, though with the bold apple butter it is a little more in the background than when I have it with chocolate or cookies, which enhance the vanilla flavor.

Second breakfast after attending early service…gotta love early service!

We made three teas and served them with Dubliner, Ballyshannon, and Baby Bel cheeses, and…GASP! JOYNESS! Bissinger Chocolates.

This is a nice, smooth vanilla black tea. I drink it plain, daughter takes it with milk and sugar. This is one that a friend and I both have to order by the pound.

Thank goodness the pound bag will be here in a day or two! My youngest is loving this one as a cold brewed iced tea. Today we drank it hot with our creme de menthe brownies. Very good!

This was the second tea on today’s tea party menu. The vanilla was especially appealing today – it almost smelled as rich as Vanilla Comoro! It paired wonderfully with our cream puffs and cookies! We took this one with no milk or sugar, but if you like a sweet dessert tea it takes sugar well. Our youngest taster likes it with a touch of milk.

Morning tea with hubby, had to make two pots!

I wanted lots of really smooth teas today, so this was in the line-up for tea party. We served fudge brownies with freshlightly-sugared strawberries. Vanilla Black is not as sweet as its decaf counterpart, Vanilla Comoro, but is a delicious vanilla tea. A friend just switched to this one from Mariages Freres and really likes it, and the bonus is that it is so much less expensive! Smooth, sweet, no additions needed.

This is my youngest child’s favorite tea! We shared a pot at tea party today, and it was smooth and rich as always. I drank it plain, she adds milk and sugar. I think I like it better than Mariages Freres Vanille des Iles.

I oversteeped – I almost never do that! But even with two minutes over my steep time this tea is delicious. Vanilla Black does not taste like a caffeinated version of Vanilla Comoro. I find it a little more flavorful than Mariage Freres’ vanilla tea.

A lovely vanilla tea for this afternoon! It tastes great sans additions, but is also very nice with sugar and/or milk.

A very nice vanilla flavored black tea! This one is not nearly as sweet as their Vanilla Comoro and I use it as a stand alone or with cookie or cheese plate tea. It is pretty iced, as well. Must have been good – I just drank the whole pot! I do put a little sugar in this one if I am not having it with food.

Lovely tea! Not as sweet and dessert-y as their Vanilla Comoro which is pure vanilla caramel delight, but excellent when you want something a little less sweet and rich and you don’t mind the caffeine!

I drank a cup of this today especially for JacquelineM in hopes of giving a good description of it to compare with Vanilla Comoro.

Vanilla Black doesn’t taste as much like a dessert tea to me, while Vanilla Comoro oozes sweetness and caramel. I drank it first with no additions to see if the tea taste was coming through for me. It did, and I also thought I detected a very light cocoa note? I would assume that most flavored teas begin as a mild Ceylon but perhaps there is a hint of Keemun in this, or perhaps it is part of the natural flavor. The vanilla is not as sweet as Comoro, but does have the mellowness of a Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla. I drink this one with sugar only, but perhaps I should have tried it with milk to see what happens. This is a very good tea, and I enjoyed it iced in early spring.

Tried this one iced yesterday because it was so everloving hot here! Served it with a plain but very creamy homemade cheesecake. I thought it made a lovely iced tea. Gentle flavor, not so sweet that it becomes difficult to pair with foods.

What better salve for the melacholy than a heady, fragrant vanilla concoction?

Brewed a little hotter than normal, resulting in an ever-so-slightly smoky finish, but no bitterness. This is a pretty simple afternoon/dessert tea, quite satisfying.

A nice treat in the afternoon. A light vanilla flavor.

A light, mild vanilla flavor. Not too strong or potent. Enjoyable.