Sticky Toffee Bread Pudding Dragon Pearls

Tea Advent Calendar – Day 11

Oh my goodness, this is SO GOOD! My whole kitchen smelled amazing while it was brewing and it tasted almost as good as it smelled: notes of sweet toffee, pastry, and something that’s reminding me of dates. This is the best dessert tea I’ve had in a long time…huge thank you to Shae for including it in my advent calendar, especially since it was limited edition and is no longer available. (Pretty sad about that, because I would gladly buy a couple of ounces if I could!)

going to be a few of these samples today – trying to get through more of my samples so that i can focus on having a proper weigh of my cupboard this month sometime. this one is SUPER aromatic. Toffee explosion all over the house…making me want to go bake something haha. I probably overleafed this as my one complaint about the directions for this is 1-2 tsp, which isn’t very helpful when you’re dealing with BALLS of tea. Better would be something like 4 -6 balls or whatever per 8oz.

taste wise though, i’m a fan. the flavouring sort of stays in your mouth, so it’s not a tea i would drink a TON of, but for that indulgent dessert tea you need every now and then, this would be a good one. thanks Variatea!

I found a new recipe for tea-infused hot chocolate because I was intrigued to find something different. I stumbled upon this one by Savvy Eats: http://www.savvyeat.com/tea-infused-hot-chocolate. It seemed simple enough and tbh I was skeptical that it would work b/c you only steep the tea in cold milk for like 15 minutes. I also used an older tea and was unsure how much flavor it still had.

The steeped milk gets mixed with a tbsp cocoa powder, a tbsp (a little less) of sugar, and 2 tbsps chocolate (I used 1 tbsp milk and 1 tbsp semi-sweet). I was surprised after all was said and done that I actually got some toffee flavor. It obviously was VERY chocolatey and very creamy but there was a caramel/toffee sweetness that snuck in.

This is a queued tasting note.

Brought this one with me to DAVIDsTEA to drink on shift earlier this week. Everyone was pretty excited about it/the dry smell. It’s so sweet and rich smelling and the name and then the appearance of the leaf really draw you in.

Here are the notes I scribbled on my cup drinking it:

- Added milk
- Malty, sweet, caramel, freshly baked bread, cocoa
- Smooth with no bitterness, minimal astringency
- Almost tasted like an Assam profile?

I loved it a lot overall; the one change I think I’d make is a slightly shorter steep time because I went with around five minutes, and I’m pretty sure that’s where the astringency came from. Also, I think I’d like to try it without milk as well – the primary reason I added it in the first place was to soften the astringency, and if that wasn’t an issue I don’t think the milk would be needed.