Bubbie's Baklava

I had this as my first tea this morning, and just opening up the container was the beginning to a lovely experience. I opened it and it smelled like warm cinnamon and apple. After I brewed it, the nutty character came out and the flavor was amazing. I don’t add sweetener to my tea, but this one would definitely be enhance by a little sugar to bring out the sweetness of the cinnamon. This is definitely a good one!

I really love this tea. A lot. I first tried this in 12 Days collection and loved it! I went and bought a collection of Christmas teas that had this in it (and Santa’s Secret-another favorite!). Today I used my free 50g towards Bubbie’s Baklava. I needed to stock up on it before it goes away! (I’m already debating going back and buying more…)

Anyways, to get to the tea. I have no clue how people find this to taste like apple and cinnamon. Yes, those flavors are present, but I really think that the description of ‘apple cinnamon" doesn’t do this tea justice. It is nutty, sweet, warm (in a spicy way, not in a temperature way), cinnamon-y….but they all fit together cohesively. I was baffled when I saw the amount of ingredients in this tea, and yet they all work together very nicely.

To be honest, I have never had baklava. I can’t really say if this tastes like baklava or not. Perhaps it doesn’t and that’s why this tea has gotten some bad reviews. I’m not sure. I just know that I love it!

Cooking TTB #4

Out of all of the winter/christmas releases this year from David’s this is the one I was most interested to try however after suffering from a serious BF spending hemorrhage and an overflowing tea hoard I couldn’t justify a $50 order with David’s to hit free shipping and so I had to console myself with the likely fact that I wouldn’t get to try this and was therefore very happy when I found this sample hiding at the bottom of the Cooking TTB!!

Brewed up at 195 and steeped for 5 minutes I really must admit I’m not getting a real baklava taste out of this tea, there doesn’t appear to be a syrupy nutty pastry taste which I usually associate with baklava but holy cow is there cinnamon and apple!! Tasty and very glad I had the opportunity to try it out but I’m also glad I didn’t break the bank on a sneaky purchase of this myself. Back to the box it goes!!

I got this tea on sale in a set with forever nuts and toasted walnut. Forever nuts was the main draw, but I am liking this as well. I don’t so much get the balkava out of it, though. To me it smells just like apple cinnamon oatmeal. I’m getting some nice nutty flavours as well as the cinnamon, but the fruit in it doesn’t really come through. The girl at the store recommended I steep it longer than 4-7 minutes to bring out the flavours more. I have one of the travel tumblers so I’ve been leaving the tea in the whole time and it doesn’t get too strong. Overall I like this, it is nice and comforting and light.

I am loving this tea, even if it’s just for it’s simpleness and complexity. Like it’s namesake of Bubbie, it is both a very simple tea at once with a very complex and intriguing personality making it another one of those teas that can go well with anything, whether it’s a start to the day or a music chilling jam session.

Recommended books for this tea are:

Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding, The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew by Cristina Odone, A Day Late and a Dollar Short by Terry Mcmillan, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Another one of my Christmas teas, this is probably the most intriguing blend from the winter collection. I LOVE baklava, though it’s hard to find outside of Greek restaurants here.

The smell of the tea is heavenly, maybe not exactly like baklava but it certainly has that European bakery vibe. With the oolong base I actually expected the tea to be a bit sweeter than it turned out to be. But it’s got a bakey note with lots of cinnamon – maybe a bit too much in this case. Unfortunately the honey part of the baklava is noticeably missing so the end result isn’t quite like the dessert but more like a spice cake of some sort. I don’t see spicy or dessert flavour used very often with an oolong base so it’s good to see DT changing it up a little bit.

Taking a detour from my birthday Butiki blast to enjoy another B tea that I’ve been looking forward to. The smell of this one is lovely. Strong cinnamon, cardamom, and nuttiness. The dry leaf is a little fruit salad looking for my style, but I decided to just roll with it. The brew is pretty tasty. It’s a little spicier than most real baklavas I’ve had, but the honey nuttiness is spot on and the spice highlights the flavor nicely. The cinnamon is assertive and bright, but not overly so. The rose is subtle at first. However, it gets stronger as I keep drinking and the tea cools. It never becomes the dominant flavor but it’s definitely present and pleasant.

The only think I really dislike about this blend is that it’s obviously pre-sweetened. It doesn’t seem to have huge chunks of sugar in it like the chocolate macaroon blend does, but it is still too sugary. Maybe the non-tea chunks are candied? I prefer to control the level of sweetness myself.

The resteep is too thin and imbalanced to be worth the bother.

Very pleasant, and not overly cloying tea. I feel like a lot of times with similarly spiced teas they get kind of dusty tasting with all of that cinnamon etc. but this one still had a very nice tea flavor. I had it as a part of the Advent Calendar. I might try it again, as the blend was fairly unique with the addition of honey.

So when I was first starting out in tea and really a little too eager, I bought 9oz of this online, untried, because it was 40% off the big bag. And then I tried it and really really disliked it. It just wasn’t my style. I didn’t know about DavidsTea’s return policies at the time so I kept it, and took the chance to offload some of it into every traveling teabox that came my way, so if you’ve seen this in a TTB in the last two year, that was probably me. I gave out most of it that way, so at this point I only have a tin or so left.

Now coming back with a bit more experience in tea, and some more budding experience in the way that DavidsTea specifically blends such teas, I don’t hate it anymore. Do I love it? Ehh, it’s still a bit too sweet for me, to be taken in small amounts. Hot, it’s definately too too sweet, but room temp or iced? Maybe I can actually drink the rest of this down. (I don’t regret giving away most of it though. Not at all. Haha) I’m learning to appreciate more these types of really sweet teas, not that I want to make it a habit.

The oolong in this is kind of mild, or maybe it’s just overwhelmed by all of the fruits and nuts in this mixture. I think I’ll experiment with adding in some other oolongs that I have on hand.

I’ve come to notice that I tend to gravitate towards teas with similar flavours: cinnamon, cardamon, nutty, naturally sweet, a bit spicy etc. Bubbie’s Baklava is a tea that covers just about all of those flavours. I absolutely love that it’s an oolong (a type of tea I haven’t tried much of), as I’m able to get at least three steeps out of it (might try for more later). I’ve tried with with agave, brown sugar and 2% milk froth. While it is delicious, it’s not a super unique tea. The first steep, I brewed it for about 3 min, then the next two times I just kept the tea bag in the whole time.