Cranberry Apple Crumble

I went to see one of my Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners the other day— possibly the same one who suggested that I stop drinking tea altogether. Clearly, my response to that suggestion was nope, not going to happen.

This visit was about a new issue. The suggestion this time was to stop drinking caffeine at or before three. As opposed to approximately seven. Ok, not ideal but possibly do-able. At least as a health experiment. For a limited period of time. Just to see what will happen.

With this in mind, I’ve been slowly beginning to wrap my head around the concept while hunting a few non-caffeinated options down for the moment that I am psychologically prepared to follow these instructions. The moment arrived.

This tea is delicious. My spoon of leaf contained about three cranberries and that dense cranberry flavour permeated each sip. I steeped low and slow to escape the rooibos woodiness and that worked out nicely. The cranberry shines with a slight bit of citrus flavouring the tartness. The apple sweetens and softens the sip. And the gently cinnamon spiced honeybush and rooibos trails behind suggestive of sweet crumble pastry. Beautiful.

If I have to relax with the caffeine from three o’clock onwards, blends like this are going to make this challenging project a lot easier.

I’ve come to the conclusion (maybe again, but i can’t recall) that i am not a fan of 52 teas honeybush blends. Something about it just never seems to appeal to me regardless of the flavour. It’s just too overpowering and distracts from the blend each and every time. frown. it’s not quite a woody taste…it’s just…not sure. I’ve had honeybush that i DO like, so not sure what it is about this version that never works for me. :(

Thanks for the sample VariaTea!

I don’t know how in the world I managed to miss this one when it first came out! Cranberry teas!? I’m pretty well always down for a cranberry tea – I just love them so much. Plus, VariaTea isn’t kidding when she says this one has a lot of cranberry – they’re HUGE and the bag is just packed with them.

I tried this one iced, I think largely because I didn’t realize quite how strong the spice notes would actually be. It was still very good, but I expected more brightness from the fruit and a softer, warming spice finish and my experience was that it was largely dry cinnamon and allspice notes in a very robust way with some gentler apple and cranberry notes in the tail end of the sip and aftertaste. Pretty well the reverse from what I had anticipated. Also, a bit of a honeyed woody kind of taste from the base tea.

None of that actually tasted bad but had I realize that’s what the flavour ratio was going to be like I definitely would have chosen to make this into a hot cup instead. Plus, regardless, I think I’d enjoy just a bit more brightness and forward flavour from the cranberry. Still, it was a tasty tea overall!

HOLY CRANBERRIES, BATMAN (BATANNE?)!! This bag is just packed full of the whole berries. I had to actually push my teaspoon past them and dig to the bottom since I thought they were all floating at the top and yet each spoon still came out with at least 2 huge cranberries. And trust me, you taste them. This has a whole lotta cranberry flavor but without the tartness. I blame the apple for that. There is also a lot of pieces of oranges rolling around in my package of this tea and though I don’t get a pronounced orange flavor, there is a definite citrus brightness here. There is also a fair bit of flavor being contributed by the base teas, which I don’t love but at least here they work with the other ingredients instead of completely overpowering them.

This week’s tea of the week – and this is really a lot yummier than I thought it would be. I like cranberries OK (I eat them every weekend in my oatmeal) but cranberry tea isn’t always my favorite. But this is really good – the apple softens some of the tart of the cranberry and the orange really brightens the cup.

And there’s a really nice, buttery, brown sugary ‘crumble’ taste to it too that I think might be my favorite part of the tea. And if I were to make a Cranberry Apple Crumble – the buttery, brown sugary crumble topping would probably be my favorite part of the crumble. I blame my sweet tooth.

Sweet, a little tart, juicy and really yummy.