Tangerine Cupcake with Marshmallow Frosting Black Tea

I’m tasting citrus but not necessarily tangerine.

This reemerged during the great teabox upheaval. Lovely cup. It’s all very subtle, but terrific, regardless.

Oddly enough, with this glorious cup of goodness, the marshmallow cream introduced itself with a nice surrounding black tea base in the very first sip and the tangerine citrus presented in the after sip. Perhaps my experience with this tea is a bit different than my first review of it because I added the slightest smidge more leaf and steeped today just a bit longer than I usually do. So, I don’t know whether this particular base is more finicky than 52teas usual lovely black base blends, or the stars need to align themselves for me to have a perfect cup of this. Today’s cup was pretty close to perfect. I have a couple more spoons of leaf, so the experiment continues.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I wanted to have an easy session today, so I went the way of western style tea brewing. I threw some of this in the tea infuser, boiled the water to 195 F, and allowed the tea to steep for 3 minutes.

Real simple.

Notes: The black tea base jumps forward immediately upon drinking; fortunately, it’s smooth and mellow. I’ve a tendency to be skeptical with black tea/black tea blends due the majority of them having bitter notes, and unsuitable to my palate. There is a subtle note of tangerine in this blend, but that’s all I’m tasting—black tea base & tangerine. Maybe this tea needs a little something-something (cough sugar cough) to bring the other notes out, but I don’t work like that, so the world may never know!

PS. Have a wonderful year everyone! I’ll hopefully have more reviews up & look forward to reading your tea adventures in 2017!

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I definitely taste tangerine and marshmallow in a strong way. I wouldn’t say it is reminiscent of a cupcake, but it is still pretty tasty. I like this hot, because citrussy marshmallow feels odd to me cold.

This tea is considerably better than I remember. The tangerine is present but not powerful; the dominant flavour here is actually the marshmallow, which is really nice. I’m sure the vanilla is helping to round that out, as well. The aftertaste is just lovely, creamy and delicious. I would guess it’s very similar to the various vanilla/marshmallow blacks 52teas has to offer, with the delicious addition of tangerine. Upping rating from 76 to 81.

52teas is quickly becoming one of my go-to companies for flavorful black tea blends. I love that Anne creates a new tea on a weekly basis. I don’t like that I have to place orders so frequently to avoid having a tea sell out while I wait to see what the next TOTW is. Thankfully (for my tea budget) many of her recent TOTW blends are green teas, rooibos/honeybush-based and/or floral, so there’s been a lull in my ordering. I tend to jump on her black tea blends though, and I’m glad I picked up two large bags of this tea that was the TOTW the last week of April.

I don’t get a lot of cupcake flavor, but the tangerine and vanilla marshmallow notes are divine. Again, the black tea base is lovely and smooth. The tea is slightly sweet and has delicious tart citrus flavor. The tea also takes milk and sweetener well; I’ve used stevia drops and almond milk this morning.