Birthday Cake

I’m not a huge dessert tea person – but this is a good tea when you want something sweet. It tastes a lot like a vanilla cupcake and the sprinkles in the tea are adorable :) I don’t sweeten this tea and sometimes add milk. This is on my list to try as a latté!

Sometimes people with a tendency to commit great acts of derp should not be allowed in the kitchen. I was hit with the baking itch this evening and decided to try my hand at some bread, two quick breads and one crock pot bread. The first bread is a cheesy bread, I pulled it out of the oven and noticed it was awfully flat, after removing it from the pan and slicing it I noticed it was not a loaf of bread but a cheese flavored brick. Turns out I completely skimmed over the ‘baking powder’ line in the ingredients list, it tastes ok (a little sweet) but the texture is so dense. Luckily my almond poppy bread is delicious, and so far the crock pot bread is looking ok, but I am so sad about the cheese fail.

Today’s tea is Birthday Cake by DAVIDsTEA, a blend of Red and Green Rooibos, Honeybush, Sprinkles, Ice Cream Bits, and Natural and Artificial Flavoring. Tea that has sprinkles makes me happy, I mean how can it not? Sprinkles are awesome, I may have been guilty of eating more sprinkles than is necessarily healthy when I worked at an ice cream shop as a teenager. The aroma of this cake is intensely sweet! There are strong notes of cake batter, vanilla, and a hint of cocoa. Under this explosion of cake and sweetness is a really strong note of woodiness from the Rooibos and Honeybush, it is almost like sitting at a table and having a slice of cake with ice cream and sitting next to it is a cup of Rooibos tea.

Giving this cake themed tea a good steeping, the aroma of the wet leaves went from being mostly sweet and cake like to a more even blend of cake batter, ice cream and woodiness. The liquid is very woody! There are also notes of cake batter and honey, but mostly it is fairly dry wood.

Tasting time…perhaps I should have some birthday candles lit to commemorate the theme of the tea. The taste starts out very woody and dry, but also a little waxy from the sprinkles. After the initial woodiness the taste fades to vanilla liqueur and a touch of cake batter sweetness. I found the cake taste from the aroma of the dry leaves has mostly vanished, but what is left is not unpleasant. It is not a bad tea, but it is not one of my favorites.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/07/davidstea-birthday-cake-tea-review.html

Cue the music…. “I’ll give you a taste, make it like your birthday everyday”. I think those Katy Perry lyrics really depicts how this blend tastes, KIDDING! But let me tell you, I actually really like this blend a lot. It does taste like birthday cake, you can actually taste those little notes of cake batter and that makes it so much more festive and enjoyable to drink. It does taste very similar to the Red Velvet Cake actually, so it is a good caffeine-free alternative if you like that blend (Personally I love both of them). I didn’t buy this blend until this summer (which is quite odd because it’s Iced tea season for me now..) and I decided to be a little adventurous and try this iced. I was pleasantly surprised…in a good way…. because it tastes absolutely amazing! It definitely doesn’t have the birthday cake flavour when it is iced (presumably because of the dilution of the ice…duh?) but it does taste like sweet tea you get from the U.S (which I actually love so much) or if you are familiar with the big Arizona Iced tea cans, it tastes just like the sweet tea flavour. So good.

This tea is very similar to Oh Canada!, but sorry I like that one better! This one does not have that much flavor until you add sugar. It tastes a little to sweet and sugary for me, but is still a good dessert tea. I plan on finishing the bag I have at home, but will probably order a cup from the store before I repurchase more loose tea.

The wonderful Virginia sent this to me despite the fact that we both have an aversion to rooibos. I trust her so it was worth a try :-). I actually liked this a shocking amount considering it was rooibos. The birthday cake icing taste is spot on. The only thing that keeps this from being insanely good is the rooibos taste underneath. So woodsy :-/. It kind of tastes like someone ran out of flour while baking a birthday cake and made up the difference with sawdust.

This tea never gets old. Just so freakin’ good! Ughh can’t get over how amazing it is! This was the perfect tea for my miserable morning. I say miserable morning but holy shanghai, so many good things happened today!

Such as:
https://instagram.com/p/14JkspKHHk/?taken-by=ostdalost

And this!
https://instagram.com/p/148XEZqHOL/?taken-by=ostdalost

Hopefully those images work. xD A couple more highlights have happened today but I’ll have to post on instagram about it tomorrow…er…later today since it’s 1am here. :O

A big ol thank you to VariaTEA for sending this tea my way!

Oh dessert teas. And it’s caffeine free as well! Ahh I love teas like this :)
This is dang good okay. It smells like a typical vanilla birthday cake dry, and the sweetness just carries over as it brews. The woodsy rooibos takes over a bit too much to my liking so the sweet birthday cake gets lost a bit, but it’s still totally fine.
But this is a lovely tea. Love love love all my rooibos at night :)

Backlogging from last night. Wow, this is sweet! Has a very strong sugary/mapley smell. The taste is pretty close to the description: vanilla icing and sugar. Substituted this instead of some sorbet for dessert last night and it definitely quelled the sweet craving.

2 teaspoons and a little vanilla half and half.

I thought I read somewhere on here that this was like vanilla icing when you cold-steeped it. I tried it, and it didn’t work out. It tastes too medicinal, which is such a bummer. I guess I’ll have to stick to enjoying this one hot.

This tea is one of the guilty pleasures, the idea of adding ice cream (freeze dried or otherwise) just seems so wrong and yet it tastes so right! It’s just like drinking a hot mug of birthday cake, for better or for worse! The Rooibos is completely lost but one doesn’t sit down with a birthday cake tea actually looking for tea do they? It’s not something I could drink every day, but when that sugar craving hits and I have to have some sweet sin this hits the spot!