Browsing Tag

cake

Pu-erh Tea Reviews

Denong Premium Pu-erh Teas Review

18th September 2016

I was contacted a while back by Denong to see if I would like to review some of their tea,  I was really flattered and swiftly agreed!

I haven’t had much Pu-erh tea before so I’ve really enjoyed this experience. Denong sent me 4 different teas to review and although they were all really different, they were all fantastic and have some of the most imaginative names I’ve seen! Read on to find out what I thought.

 

enchanting-beauty
Enchanting Beauty – 2015 Spring Harvest

This tea has a nice delicate flavour with sweet floral undertones that are followed by quite a dry, slightly bitter taste which blend well with each other. The slight dryness was much appreciated as it made this tea thoroughly refreshing, it was actually really hot here when I was drinking this tea so this worked out well!

I particularly enjoyed the smell of this tea, perfect to get lost in and to forget about the stresses of life, quite enchanting as the name suggests😛 The second and third steeping of this tea caused it to lose it’s bitterness leaving just a delicate sweetness that lightly danced on my tongue.

 

2005-ginseng-scent-ripe-puerh
Ginseng Scent Ripe Pu-erh – 2005 Spring Harvest

This tea was the most fragrant of the four teas but the smell very very slightly reminded me of fish before I prepared the tea but this was completely removed once it had been rinsed. Ginseng Scent Ripe Pu-erh produces a beautiful amber liquid when prepared and was the most economical of these Denong teas.

The flavour was deep and complex with a hint of sweetness and a pleasing zing, which I found perfect for curling up with for a Netflix session!

 

2004-denong-ripe-puerh
Denong Ripe Pu-erh – 2004 Unknown Harvest

Denong Ripe Pu-erh has the darkest appearance of the four teas and was the one that had the most intact pressed tea from the cake.

The tea produces a dark orangey brown liquid with an equally deep malty flavour. The most enjoyable aspect of this tea occurs when you’ve swallowed, as an addictive sweetness flows round your mouth, this is one quality that really separated this from other Pu-erh tea I’ve tried.

 

elegant-tranquility
Elegant Tranquility – 2015 Spring Harvest

I’ve saved the best until last with this one! Elegant Tranquility not only has the most awesome name, but also the most awesome flavour! It has a deep naturally sweet flavour to it, which was really moreish and has kept me going through many busy work days since it arrived!

This tea is crazily economical, as most Pu-erh tea is but you really do get a lot of infusions from this. The first steeping is by far the sweetest of the bunch but the array of flavours with each subsequent steeping is amazing and it really takes you on a flavourful journey. The sweetness fades with each steeping but the tea is never lacking in character. If you decide to venture in to the world of Pu-erh tea with Denong I definitely recommend including this tea in your order 😊



Closing Words

Overall I’ve loved my time with these Pu-erh teas from Denong and I’m amazingly grateful they sent them all this way for me to try 😊 I hope they’ve enjoyed reading my review and all my readers have too!

You can find Denong here, they also have an incredibly informative blog that’s well worth a read, especially if you’re new to Pu-erh.I highly recommend checking out their Pu-erh tea, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. They have a Pu-erh tea sampler which is a perfect place to start if you’re new to Pu-erh and would like to try a collection of different Pu-erh.

As always you can find me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you have any questions or you love tea as much I do and would like to chat! 😊

I’d love to hear any recommendations for tea I should try in the comments below!

Bye for now! xXx

4 Comments
Black Tea Fruit Tea Reviews

T2 Tea Black Forest Bliss & Terrific Toffee Review

2nd September 2016

I’m a huuuge fan of T2 Tea, I’ve been in love with their tea ever since I wandered past one of their stores in London. They have an incredible range of tea but I particularly enjoy their fruit teas, especially in these summer months when I’m getting my cold brew on!

I was thrilled when they sent me some of their flavoured matcha to review and equally delighted when they sent me some of their best summer teas as well! Read on to find out what I thought of Black Forest Bliss & Terrific Toffee from T2 Tea.

I often enjoy using tea as a replacement for naughty calorific food (mainly chocolate), so I was particularly excited to try these dessert-like teas 🙂

 

Side View

Terrific Toffee

I absolutely adore toffee flavoured tea! Black tea and toffee are a match made in heaven, they pair so well and this tea is a fine example of this. It smells so so good, it’s sweet and really has a cosy feeling to it. I could imagine just curling up with a mug of this as the colder nights drift in here in the UK. I like that this tea isn’t overly sweet but still has a deep satisfying flavour, one I’ll be enjoying for a long time!

Terrific Toffee is EXCELLENT for pudding replacement, I can skip the calories and have something sweet and delicious after dinner or pretty much all the time, as it’s been since this tea arrived. A little bit of this tea goes a real long way, especially in a tea bottle of some kind where it has longer to steep, for more on tea bottles check out my Top 10 Tea Bottles post 🙂

 

Black Forest Bliss

Black Forest Bliss

This is technically a tisane as it contains no tea and is primarily made up of cocoa husks with some fruity ingredients too. The packaging is fantastic, T2 really know how to make their customers feel special! They steered away from their trademark orange boxes and went with a super pretty red, white and black box, just like the colours of Black Forest Gateaux!

Before I’d even opened the sealed plastic packaging I could already smell the chocolatey, “cherryey” fragrance, which only increased once I’d opened the packet. This tea really does smell so good once it’s been prepared, and the taste is equally exciting. It starts with a mainly chocolate flavour and then a slight fruity zing from the cherries kicks in, the two flavours are paired perfectly. Amazingly this tea really does taste of Black Forest Gateaux, minus the cream which is probably a good thing!

T2’s Black Forest Bliss is also great iced or cold brewed but as it’s so strongly flavoured less is more! 😉

 

Top Down

 

Merrier Infuser

Merrier Tea Infuser

I also received one of T2’s Merrier Tea Infusers with my tea, which I’m really thrilled with. It has bright green rubberised handles, with a matching lid to hold the flavours in when infusing. A really nice touch is the pattern the holes on the infuser make up, super cute! The lid also doubles as a drip tray making this perfect for getting your tea fix when you’re at work, without making a mess. It’s also available in a load of colours so there’s one for everyone!

I have various infusers but I always come back to my infusers that are this kinda style, they’re easy to wash and allow the leaves to really open up and release their flavour. This will definitely be one of my most used infusers, my old one was a tad trashed so this is a welcome replacement! You can take a closer look at the Merrier infuser here.

 

Final Words

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my review of T2’s Black Forest Bliss & Terrific Toffee teas, I really recommend trying them or basically any of T2’s tea! 🙂 Black Forest Bliss is out of stock online at the moment so I can’t link directly to it but it’s available in T2’s UK shops and will be back in stock online soon!

I’m really grateful T2 sent me these teas to review, I’ve enjoyed reviewing them and photographing them so much!

If you’d like to read more of my tea reviews and other tea related posts you can subscribe to my newsletter below or find me on social media (Twitter, Instagram or Facebook).

If you haven’t already entered my competition to win over 260 teabags head over and enter here 🙂

Bye for now! xXx

 

My Mailing List

 

 

 

 

0 Comments
Matcha

Matcha Halloween Zombie Cake Pops Recipe

27th October 2015

I wanted to make something horrific for halloween and I decided cake pops would be perfect. You can eat them yourselves, make them with your family or even give them to trick or treaters!

I made white chocolate chip vanilla cake and covered them in matcha white chocolate, matcha is a fantastic natural alternative to green food colouring and tastes divine. I use Kiss Me Organics Culinary Grade Matcha, as it has a great taste and is also really green and it gives the brightest green colouring I’ve found, it’s also cheap for over 100g!

You’ll also need a cake pop mould, I used this  Sweetly Does It mould.

Originally the plan was to use orange food colouring to make orange chocolate and decorate them as jack o lanterns but the food colouring I bought was awful and wouldn’t make the white chocolate anywhere near the orange I wanted.

I also decided I wanted to get some matcha involved somehow and while watching the Walking Dead premiere I decided that the perfect combo would be matcha green cake pops with zombie jack o lanterns! I had one white chocolate cake pop that I made before adding the matcha, so I had an idea to have the white chocolate one as a human. The finished result is the display of the women running from the zombies. It might not be that good (I’d never written with icing before) but they tastes fantastic which is the main thing! 🙂

So here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

 

120g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs, room temperature

150g unrefined caster sugar

4 tbsp of milk, also room temperature

180g of self raising flower

1 bag of white chocolate chips

Culinary grade matcha, to taste

 

Method:

1. First thing you’ll want to do is cream the sugar and butter in a bowl

2. Add the eggs one at a time and beat gently with an electric whisk and add the vanilla extract

3. Sieve the flour and baking powder in to a bowl and combine

4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix thoroughly

5. Add the milk and stir until the batter mixture is smooth and your desired amount of white chocolate chips.

6. Grease your cake pops mould thoroughly in all the holes and spoon the mixture in to the holes, add the lid of the mould. You can use a cocktail stick to prod the cake pops through the hole in the mould, to check if they’re cooked.

7. Place the mould on a tray to stabilise the cake pops while they cook and cook for 15-20 mins

8. Remove the cake pops when they’re ready and leave on a wire rack to cool. Take the top of the mould off and you should have perfect cake pops!

9. Last step is to melt some white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water, add the amount of matcha you like. Dip the cake pop sticks in the white chocolate and leave them to set slightly, this will help to secure the cake pop in place on the stick (you can see my fallen cake pops as zombie heads in the background lol).

10. Stab your first cake pop with the stick and dip the cake pop in to the white chocolate, I used a fork to help lift the cake pop out, which greatly reduced the amount of cake pops falling off their stick. Put the cake pop in the holder and allow to set before decorating, repeat this for the rest of the cake pops and you’re done! 😀

Close Up

 

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you have a fantastic Halloween! 😀

If you try these I’d love to hear how you get on 🙂

xXx

0 Comments
Matcha Recipes

Carrot Cake With Matcha Honey Cream Cheese Frosting

3rd October 2015

Bluebird Tea Co. recently launched Matcha Honey, what could be better than the combination of Bluebird’s matcha and local Brighton honey?! 😀

They sent me a jar to experiment with and it’s a really fantastic product, the honey is incredible and the sweetness of it blends perfectly with the matcha. It’s great on toast, crumpets or added to tea but it’s also great in frosting! 😉

I thought this cream cheese frosting would be paired perfectly with the subtle spiciness of moist carrot cake and this recipe was born!

After some taste testing I struck the perfect balance, which is roughly 3 teaspoons of matcha honey. It depends largely on how strong you want the matcha flavour to be, I wanted it to be definitely matcha flavoured but without bitterness and without the honey flavour becoming sickly but feel free to alter the quantity to your taste. I also wanted to keep the traditional colouring of carrot cake, with beautiful cream frosting! 😀

Cinammon Close Up

Cake Ingredients

3 eggs

300g soft light brown sugar

300g plain flour

300ml sunflower oil

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon (plus extra to decorate)

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

3/4 teaspoon of ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract

300g grated carrots

 

Matcha Honey Cream Cheese Ingredients

2 1/2 – 3 teaspoons Bluebird Tea Co. Matcha Honey

300g icing sugar

125g cream cheese, refrigerated

50g unsalted butter, room temperature

 

I used 3 x 7″ cake tins but you can vary this a bit depending if you want thicker or thinner layers 🙂

 

Method

Cake:

Beat sugar, eggs and oil with a handheld electric whisk or mixer until well incorporated.

Sugar, Eggs and Oil

Slowly add bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, flour, salt and vanilla, continue to beat until mixed.

Stir in the carrot and transfer the mixture to 3 cake tins, with greaseproof paper on the base. Smooth the mixture over with a palette knife or by tapping the trays on the work surface.

Mixture In Tray

 

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Let the trays cool a little bit and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

 

 

Frosting:

Beat butter and icing sugar together with an electric whisk on a slow speed until combined. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat gently until incorporated. Turn the mixer up to a high speed and continue beating until light and fluffy, approximately 3 -4 minutes. Be careful not to overdo it to avoid the frosting becoming too sloppy. Finally add the matcha honey and whisk in on a slow speed, your best bet is to add it gradually and keep tasting it to get the flavour to your desired strength.

Frosting

Pick the layer with the most even dome to be the top of your cake, then use a bread knife to slowly take a layer off the top of the other two layers to flatten them out. This will make frosting easier, make the cake more stable and also look better when the cake is cut.

All you have to do now is spread frosting on the bottom layer, add the middle layer and do the same to add the top. Then spread remaining frosting on top of the cake and work it down the sides. You can either try for a flat smooth look with an offset spatula or keep it rough and fluffy like mine.

That’s it! You have the best carrot cake in the world 😉

Front

Slice

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this recipe, I adored making it and I was thrilled with the results. It’s the perfect cake to share, I divided mine up and gave some to my mum and my boyfriend’s parents and they loved it!

Definitely check out the matcha honey from Bluebird Tea Co., it’s such an easy way to get more matcha in to your diet and tastes amazing!

Bye for now! xXx

0 Comments