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More “tea infused” experimentation.

This time I went for tea infused sugar glass/candy brittle. Some people might remember I got obsessed with this recipe last summer, and I had a few OK results but I never got it quite right. This time, I came at it with a slightly different recipe! Instead of corn syrup and lemon juice, it just called for agave syrup as a substitute to help prevent crystallization. It came out mostly ok; I did succeed in getting a ‘hard crack’/shatter effect but my candy is still somewhat tacky/sticky to the touch so I’m not sure exactly what I did wrong there!?

It tastes and looks GREAT though! I picked this because I thought the turmeric would give it a good colour (it totally did!) and that the mango would be a nice flavour – and I couldn’t have called it any better because it has this beautiful dark yellow colour with a flavour that can only be described as sweet, juicy mango with JUST A LITTLE BIT of coconut. It’s marvelous!

Just have to tweak the recipe a little bit…

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpQcyEmluuO/?taken-by=ros_strange

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.

Just cross referencing tasting notes, since I also used this tea in combination with Silk Road’s Tanzania Gold CTC grade black tea to make marbled tea eggs. You can read about the whole process and turn out here:

https://steepster.com/roswellstrange/posts/382115#likes

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpN1i6MllyF/?taken-by=ros_strange

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.

“Eat Down” (620)!

When I got home from Vegas, I had a few extra days off and I found myself with the strong inclination to do some different kinds of tea infused cooking/baking. A favourite recipe of mine has always been marbled tea eggs, so that was the first thing I made.

I wanted to kind of give it my own twist though – so I made them using a mixture of this tea (as my black tea) and a Spiced Apple tisane (from DAVIDsTEA) that uses a lot of the same spices as what are in a Chinese Five Spice blend. So, it was a bit of a twist – but not one that I felt was wildly out there in terms of flavour. I mean, there were still things that connected my recipe back to the traditional recipe: the Chinese five spice, inclusion of CTC grade black tea, soy sauce, etc.

Really all I switched up was adding in the herbal tea, and I also added in some maple agave as well for a bit of sweetness…

They came out really well; definitely not as dark a marbling effect as I’ve achieved before BUT the flavour was probably the best I’ve ever created – the spiced apple notes actually soaked into the egg quite well and I’m confidant that it would be clear what you were eating even if you weren’t aware of the fact I used spiced apple tea before hand.

I just think it was really, really successful!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpN1i6MllyF/?taken-by=ros_strange

Pistachio pudding in a cup, but with the delightful addition of sweet candied cherries.

I swear I’m not making this comparison because this is a Harry Potter themed tea, but rather than reminding me a whole lot of the Slytherin household this tea kind of tastes the way I always imagined Aunt Petunia’s cake (from Chamber of Secrets) would have tasted like. I mean; it looks so decked out in creamy frosting and then those giant candied cherries on top!? If the frosting was more of a pistachio custard instead then I think it’d be a perfect match.

Latte!

Another drink from seasonal hire training; and definitely one that I enjoyed a lot more than the Juicy Orange lemonade. It’s been a long time since I last had this one; I generally find it a little too sweet. I guess it was just right on this day though; probably because it was following a cup that was literally SO CLOYING that I couldn’t finish it. Really creamy and decadent though; the raspberry is definitely present but I think what I’ve always loved is the intensity of the white chocolate. I love white chocolate.

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.

Training new seasonal hires on how to make all of the different kinds of drinks in drink station; usually we do this by having new staff make drinks for everyone on staff for the day, and the staff often strategically pick things that would allow for the new hire to practice all different kinds of drinks: iced teas, hot tea, lattes, matcha, lemonades…

It’s a lower stress was of practicing than making drinks for customers.

This one was an iced “tea lemonade” – and even though we definitely aren’t selling as much of them this time of year it’s still important that all staff know how to make them just in case. I picked Juicy Orange because I thought it would compliment the lemonade base and I was craving citrus. Our trainee actually made it perfectly with only a small amount of help needed to walk him through the correct portions. However, I drastically underestimated how sweet this one would turn out given that the lemonade itself is pretty sweet but the tea itself is even sweeter. So, I drank most of this but not all of it – I just found it FAR too cloying; even though it totally nailed the citrus elements that I was craving in the first place. SO MUCH orange. SO MUCH lemon.

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.

Sipdown (621)!

Well, at least this cup was a lot less soapy and chemical tasting than my last one. In fact, all things considered, this was pretty smooth – although it had a bit of a bland strawberry taste/really mild taste overall.

I think this is just going to go down as one of those blends that just really didn’t work well for anyone – and was a lot more of a novelty than anything else.

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.

Earlier in the week.

This one continues to be a bit of a disappointment for me; as a straight Genmaicha it’s solid – but this is not supposed to be a straight genmaicha, and it simply can’t nail the mango or coconut notes consistently. This cup did have a TINY amount of mango to it; but it was really only present with the assistance of agave to punch up the flavour a little bit.

It’s sad – and I think the order this is from is one of the biggest regrets I have tea order wise, just… ever.

So I realized literally a few minutes ago that I hadn’t announced this yet on Steepster so I figure I might as well do that, since it’s been consuming most of my life/free time right now…

I’m moving to Montreal!!!

That’s right; I was recently promoted to our store support center at work – so I’ll be hauling my ass and all my many, many tea collection things across the country to go work there. I’ll be working as a data assistant within our tea lab; which puts me a lot closer to where I’d like to be – surrounded by tea, and using more of my sommelier background. Plus, no more retail! So, I’m very excited for the move.

The problem I’m facing is that I have to be in Montreal for December 1st and I’m having a total bitch of a time finding a place to live. So, in between working at the store (because I’m going to work right up until the three days before I leave) and training my replacement there and apartment hunting for an apartment/studio several provinces over I’ve been a little bit stressed…

So really this is just one of many teas that has been by my side while browsing apartment listings/contacting landlords – still to no avail. I know I still have a month until I move, but I’m going into that frenzy mode I often slip into when I feel like I have lack of control over something.

It’s… bleck.

Drank this one on the day of the 24 Days of Tea/Advent Calendar launch at work; sort of my way of ‘tipping my hat’ to the launch/collection and sort of silently getting involved in the switch up from Halloween to the holiday season…

Which is maybe a bit of a dorky/weird thing to do, I know – but when you have 600+ teas you generally have the variety to do weird shit like that.

It was good; definitely had that tangyness to it that I find a little cheesecake-y in addition to custard/eggnog like – and more cinnamon than I expected. It actually inspired me to head out to the grocery store to try and find eggnog for eggnog lattes – but I didn’t see any.

…Yet.

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.