So, last week I decided I wanted to do something nice and elaborate for my mom as a way of basically saying “thanks for housing me” so I put together a big, elaborate supper with some carefully selected flavour pairings, a tea infused dish, and a nice Gong Fu session.
Some pictures of the whole shebang:
So how does the Blueberry Jam tea factor into things? Well, I actually infused it into a brown sugar syrup which we used to top some fresh cut fruits! Here’s a picture of that:
It was pretty easy to do; I basically infused around 8g of tea into two tablespoons of water for like five minutes – so, you know, very concentrated/potent stuff. Then I stirred in two more tablespoons of brown sugar and a dash of vanilla extract. From there I put it over heat and continued to reduce until it was a thick, viscous syrupy texture.
After that it was just a matter of picking the fruit! I went with dragonfruit and banana; I knew this would be delicious with the banana but the dragonfruit was a gamble. It’s got such a weird, distinct flavour that I wasn’t sure what would work with it. It tasted good though; if anything the syrup just brought out the natural sweetness of the fruit though. Nothing mind blowing; just tasty. Texturally, it was interesting having the fleshy, seedy texture of dragonfruit contrasted against the banana. It was a pleasant mouth experience!
Beyond that, the syrup itself was just very pleasant; really intense blueberry notes and then a beautiful, rich sweetness from the brown sugar that was more intense and indulgent than a syrup with confectionery sugar would have been. Kind of molasses-y, and really robust. It sort of brought out the malt in the black tea base.
I feel like it’s also worth note to mention I picked this tea to infuse into the syrup specifically because I knew that the inclusion of blueberry with the fruit dish/dessert would be a wonderful tie in to the blueberry compote topping on my baked brie. Which it was; the whole dish felt really nicely connected!
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
