Crème Brulée

Last fall at the end of one of my posts I ended with “Please, sir, I want some more”, & then offered to send my xmas CD to the first person who guessed what movie it was a quote from. Michelle won!! I sent her the CD & some tea samples as a prize. About a month ago I got a surprise package in return, loaded with generous samples of tea & a cute little note wishing me a good day! Thanks Michelle!

So this tea is in there, & since I was looking around for one more ‘no caffeine’ cup to end my day, this one seemed like a perfect fit.
Since I’m allergic to milk, I’ve never had a creme brulee, but I’m wondering if I could make something like that with canned coconut milk…like an egg custard, topped with brown sugar, set under the broiler briefly…hmmm…of course, I don’t really eat brown sugar either…maybe some date sugar…

Ooops! I got off track into fantasy world. This is a tasty tea, it looks like a pretty little confetti, & in spite of the fine milling , I didn’t get any rooibos stuck on my tonsils, so it was a win.

This is what I turn to in the morning when tea is suggested and I’ve not had breakfast just yet. Caffeine before food, for me is a baaaaad idea!
Milk, no sugar… this was quite delish! I would have much prefered a cuppa black tea but what can ya do? :)
The caramel note comes through, but then I also find the rooibos to be a tad sour- not that I mind it really. I wish it was a bit smoother and rounder but this does the job.

Thank you to Kittenna for this lovely tea.
I am enjoying the creamy fruitiness.
I am not sure it is truly a creme brulee flavor here – I guess it depends on if you have some berries with your creme brulee but its good for whatever it is.
I do love the green rooibos base teas!!
Thank you for allowing me to give this a try!

The first time I drank this tea I was so impressed and since then I haven’t really managed to make the same tasty cup. I decided to give it another try this evening. There have been just a few teas that have offered significantly different cups than when I first drank them. I always wonder how I happen to miss what seem like obvious flavors.

Sipping… this tea has lost all of its curious fruity notes (from my very first cup of this tea) and now tastes.. richer? There is a rather flat sweet flavor followed by something that reminds me of cinnamon or some kind of a spice. The end of the sip is strange because it gives you that nice custard-like mouthfeel, but also something pretty artificial. I don’t taste creme brûlée, sadly. Wish this blend could pull through as creme brûlée is one of my favorite desserts to eat! I usually don’t mind things that are slightly artificial, but this one is a bit too fake-tasting for me. I’m sad about lowering the rating on this tea, but it’s not for me.

I do like this rooibos, but for some reason am never quite in the mood for it. But, I got tired of pulling out pouches of caffeine-free teas and rejecting them as my before-bed cup so went for this one.

And, homemade coconut milk is giving me a whole new appreciation for this! I am smelling coconut creme brulee in my near future.

From the Great Canadian TTB.

So far tonight I have been 0 for 2 on trying teas from the TTB. Just not finding one that I like, but that is the point of the box, right? To sample other teas.

I was a bit skeptical of this one because I am not a huge rooibos or desert tea fan. This one does smell pretty good while brewing. It definitely smells like crème brulee. The taste is pretty decent. There is creamy caramel. Definitely a custard type taste, maybe kind of pastry like. I feel like I am getting a hint of pepper. Not too bad. I think I might turn out to like this one.

Creme Brulee is a wonderful dessert, and if it’s on the menu when I go out to eat you can bet that I’ll order it no matter what else they’re offering. My favorite Japanese place has a black sesame creme brulee that is heaven on earth… urgh, just thinking about it is torture, I want some right now! I really wasn’t expecting this tea to live up to the magical taste of creme brulee though, even though I know custard and burnt sugar are flavorings that you can definitely capture in tea-form since I’ve had them before. But I read the reviews, so my hopes weren’t too high.

I think this smells better than it tastes—sniffing the cup is awesome, you get the custard, caramel, even the burnt sugar! However, most of it is lost when you drink this. There’s a strong caramel taste and maybe a hint of creaminess (I added milk before tasting it so I’m not sure how much of that is the tea) but absolutely none of that crunchy topping goodness. I have about 2 servings left in my sample, so I think I’ll try to just make some burnt sugar and put some in when it brews.

I really dislike rooibos—or rather, red rooibos, this is my first experience with green and I liked it. Mostly because I couldn’t really taste it, it’s very innocuous in this blend. Maybe a tiny note of herbiness, but no icky medicinal aftertaste. All in all this is a decent dessert tea, but I don’t know if I’ll be purchasing it on its own.

One of my favorite desserts in the whole world is creme brûlée. It is so creamy and scrumptious… I felt I needed something delicious to make up for a long, busy, pretty productive yet very hectic and stressful Monday. This tea (received in a swap from Indigobloom!) seemed like just the thing I needed to relax.

The smell of the dry leaves was vanilla with a strong caramel component. The rooibos was a prominent note in the scent as well. This worried me. Not a huge fan of rooibos flavor. The rooibos was decorated with tiny yellow flowers, but overall did not strike me as a particularly picturesque blend.

While I brewed this tea (I brewed it for a long while) a caramel sweet smell was comming from the cup. I was busy enjoying the scent when my dogs decided it was a good time to brawl. I thankfully broke them up before anyone got hurt, but I was psychologically exhausted and not willing to deal with jealousy fits at the moment. So, once everything calmed down, I was ready to sip this.

First sip, increadibly unremarkable rooibos vanilla. Second sip, liked it even less. Time for sweetener. Sweetened it tasted sweet, ROOIBOS (note the HUGE caps) and chemical caramel. The aftertaste was the sadest part for me. Instead of having a smooth creamy after taste that I was looking forward to, I just gor a mouthful of chemical wierdness that somehow reminded me of Davids Tea Carrot Cake which I detested. I drank the cup down quickly hiding my disapointment from my dogs who were now staring at me curiously as a stared aimlessly at the empty tea cup.

This could have been delicous, sadly, it barely made the “meh” points in my opinion. I might drink this if shared with me, but I would never go out of my way to buy it. There are much better caramel vanilla teas out there…

Uh oh.
I’m pretty sure I hate rooibos. I couldn’t even finish this cup. I remember specifically not liking one sort of medicinal aspect of birthday cake by dt, and the very thing I didn’t like was glaringly present in this one—I can only conclude that it’s the rooibos. I hate the way it forcefully plows its way through any attempt at flavouring, obliterating any attempt by the tea maker to give the tea any flavouring other than that gross medicinal taste. It didn’t even matter if I added cream or sugar; this tea could not be saved. Eww eww eww.
I’m glad i don’t do numeric ratings. Not only is the rating system inaccessible, it also just wouldn’t be fair or accurate in this case, because although I poured this down the drain, I think I’ve come to hate rooibos and thus can’t really be objective. Why be objective though, anyway? it’s my mouth that tea is going into LOL. I’m just saying though that I don’t want to rate it poorly, because given that it’s a flavoured rooibos, it might be quite well done, but I’m not the person to be asking.

I got this a little while ago from a swap with Ninavampi and finally got around to trying it last night.

Brewed this smelled delicious – caramel, creamy goodness! The first few sips were decent but a little more hollow than the wafting smell. Thinking the taste could be bettered, I added a little sweetened condensed milk (SCM). Mistake! I got over zealous by doing that; lost a good amount of the caramel taste due to the heaviness of the SCM. I hate when that happens!

Next time I’ll leave out the SCM and maybe just put in a little rock sugar…