DAVIDsTEA’s Birthday Cake is actually the very first tea that caught my attention. It is the tea that got me curious about teas and made me drive my mother crazy until she drove me over to a DAVIDsTEA store. It is the tea that started it all and if I am being honest, I didn’t even like it that much when I first tried it.
The idea of a Birthday Cake tea just sounded too good to pass up. I mean, all the flavor of delicious birthday cake and none of the calories…Who could say no to that?! So, I went to the store and since I had no clue what I was doing I bought about 50 grams of the Birthday Cake tea and 50 grams of about 15 other teas. Of course I tried Birthday Cake first and only tasted sweet rooibos and was left disappointed. Among the 15 others, I found some I loved and some I didn’t but I found myself always coming back to Birthday Cake. Even though it wasn’t the best tea, it was the first and for that reason alone it had a special place in my heart.
When I discovered cold brewing, that is when my love for the Birthday Cake tea really bloomed. Cold brewing pushed aside the rooibos flavor, making room for the vanilla frosting deliciousness to shine. Cakey and amazing.
Well, DAVIDsTEA has taken now their beloved Birthday Cake tea and made it even more lovable. They infused their tea in a chocolate cube filled with sprinkles that sits at the end of a stick. Atop the tea-infused chocolate cube is a colorful confetti marshmallow. Submerge this delight in a cup of hot milk and stir until the chocolate is melted and the marshmallow begins to melt. What do you get? A super fun hot chocolate. And, if you are anything like me, you add just a touch more fun with a dollop of whipped cream on top. Yum!
As for the flavor of this hot chocolate…well, it is creamy and rich. It has a smooth, melted milk chocolate flavor that you can only get from real chocolate. More than the chocolate though is the birthday cake flavor. I was skeptical of whether it would actually come through but between the sprinkles and the marshmallow you definitely get a burst of birthday cake sweetness and a touch of vanilla caramel frosting from the tea.
Marshmallowy and full of sprinkle sugaryness, this might be a bit on the sweet side for most but this could make for a very special treat for any kid…or kid at heart.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Where to Buy: DAVIDs Tea
Description
This combo of tea/chocolate is not longer available but the loose leaf tea is.
This sweet and festive rooibos tea brings the taste of birthday cake to your cup any day of the year – rainbow sprinkles and all. Its creamy vanilla twist is just as craveable as the real dessert. And with all the goodness of rooibos and next to no calories, this caffeine-free infusion lets you have your cake and eat it too.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Unicorn Dream/DAVIDs Tea
Law school has meant no time and not much spare money. That means that not only have I not had a lot of time to write reviews but I haven’t really been buying tea. So, even if I wanted to write a review, a lot of my teas are so old that I don’t think my reviews would have been fair assessments of the teas. However, like so many of you, I am stuck at home riding out this coronavirus storm which means my schedule has just opened up. Plus, a wonderful friend of mine has shared plenty of teas with me and I have splurged a little so I also have new teas in my cupboard that I can review while they are still in their prime. One such new tea is a super cute blend from DAVIDsTEA called Unicorn Dream.
First of all, while some little girls (and boys) like princesses or mermaids, I was in the unicorn camp. Literally obsessed with unicorns. And while I am older now, I am still a unicorn fan. For my 25th birthday (a few years back now), I had a unicorn-themed sweet table complete with balloon trees. When my sister placed the order for the balloons, the party store thought she made a mistake and actually said it was for a birthday for a 2 and 5 year old, not a 25 year old. Basically, I am sharing this story to make it clear that I am 100% the target audience for this tea.
DAVIDsTEA doubles down on the unicorn fantasy with one of the prettiest blends I have seen in a while. This comes complete with gold sugar pearls, mini marshmallows, pink heart sprinkles, and pink and white unicorn sprinkles, all on top of a colorful fruity/herbal base. It has butterfly pea flowers in it too which means when it brews up, it is a lovely purple color. It really is quite awesome and would probably appeal to the kid in everyone on looks alone.
Looks aren’t everything when it comes to tea though and thankfully it delivers on flavor as well. It is meant to be cotton candy flavored tea. I like to cold brew it because in addition to a berry cotton candy flavor the comes through, it has a marshmallow fluffiness. This is honestly what I imagine a cloud would taste like in a world of unicorns. It is sweet and fruity and definitely candy-like. I might be a bit bias but I genuinely believe this is the perfect tea for any kid, whether they be a young child or a 28-year-old kid at heart like myself. It’s nostalgia in a cup and certainly a ray of sunshine in these crazy times!
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Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: DAVIDs Tea
Description
Warning: This tea will add some magic to your day. Our caffeine-free fruit infusion is filled with smile-inducing ingredients – from blue butterfly pea, yellow everlasting flowers & pretty pink hibiscus blossoms to unicorn & heart-shaped sprinkles. The result is an enchanting & addictive herbal tea that’s tart and lightly citrusy, with dreamy notes of sweet cotton candy and creamy marshmallow.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Capri/August Uncommon
I have had Capri by August Uncommon once before. The tea, made with turkish apple, rosehip shells, peppermint, thai pineapple, melon pieces, pear pieces, and flavoring, seemed like the perfect tea to be iced. However, I found myself disappointed by the iced tea. It was vaguely sweet and mostly mint. So today I decided to try it hot.
The mint acts more as a foundation in the hot tea. It is definitely there but mostly as a cooling freshness at the base of the tea. There is a melon flavor on top of the mint but it is so subtle. You really have to look for it. It’s just the faintest bit of sweet atop the mint. Unfortunately I am still disappointed. I want more melon, less mint, and really anything else. Pineapple would be nice or some pear.
Honeydew is a subtle flavor naturally so a honeydew flavor in tea is hard to capture. For me, this was a bit of a miss. It’s a nice mint tisane but it just fell short of what the ingredients might suggest you’re getting.
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Leaf Type: Tisane
Where to Buy: August Uncommon
Description
Have you had the pleasure of drinking fruit tea? Throughout Europe, teas made of dried fruit are well loved yet have been missing from American tea culture until now. Capri is a flavorful, cooling blend of fruits and peppermint, with a rich honeydew melon flavor. When it’s iced, it’s the perfect beverage for a hot day. Hot, it’s excellent after dinner or to wind down the day.
INGREDIENTS: turkish apple, rosehip shells, peppermint, thai pineapple, melon pieces, pear pieces, flavoring
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Fruit Thirsty Crow/Hotcups
A friend of mine was kind enough to share a sample of Hotcups’ Death by Cocoa tea with me. Prior to receiving this sample, I had not heard of this company. Then, as part of an Instagram challenge to post 365 days of tea, I featured this sample in one of my posts and tagged the company. Hotcups then reached out to me and was kind enough to share even more samples of their offerings. They sent me seven teas to try including this one, Fruit Thirsty Crow.
Fruit Thirsty Crow is a mix of currants, hibiscus petals, rosehip peel, elderberries, blueberries, cornflower petals, black currants, raspberry pieces.
I divided the sample in half and prepared a cold brew with one half and a hot cup with the other. For the cold brew, I let the tea sit in water in the fridge for approximately 24 hours. For the hot cup, I steeped it in boiling water for 4 minutes. Unfortunately life got in the way and the “hot” tea was mostly a cooled tea by the time I tried it. So, this is actually a review of a cold brew and a cooled tea.
The cooled tea tastes a little bit like bubblegum to me. Granted, not fresh, just-put-in-your-mouth gum. Instead, this is like gum that you have been chewing long enough that the flavor is slightly fading and the actual gum flavor is coming through, but not so long that it’s no longer fruity. As much as I feel like that explanation can be off-putting, its just the best way I can explain this. It’s actually an enjoyable enough cup with a hibiscus/berry flavor at the front that tapers off to that gum/wax flavor at the end of the sip.
The cold brew is better than the hot tea because that gum element is gone. It is sweeter than the cooled tea and has more berry flavor. This is more like Swedish Berry gummies in their prime than gum that’s losing it’s flavor.
Is it the best fruit infusion I have ever had? No. But it’s a nice enough tea if you like more of a berry focus.
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Leaf Type: Fruit Tisane
Where to Buy: Hotcups
Description
Ingredients: Currants, hibiscus petals, rosehip peel, elderberries, blueberries, cornflower petals, black currants, raspberry pieces.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Mango Black Tea/Capital Teas Ltd
Anyone else feel that when they drink tea on an empty stomach that it doesn’t always feel great? Sometimes I am totally fine and others it just makes me nauseous. Yet I tend to go to my kettle first thing in the morning anyways and then stress about what to make for breakfast. Well today I decided to do something a little different with my tea and ended up adding it to a breakfast smoothie.
I made a concentrate of Mango Black Tea by Capital Tea Limited by steeping 3 teaspoons of leaf in 4 ounces of 200F water for 2 minutes. The concentrate got added to a mixture of 2 frozen bananas, 200 g of honey greek yogurt and a cup of milk. I put half the mixture into a glass and got to drinking, figuring that this would allow the other ingredients to serve as breakfast while still getting my tea fix. Two birds…one stone.
The good news is I have no nausea and I have a nice comfortable full feeling. The bad news is the mango flavor was almost entirely drowned out by the other ingredients. I taste some of the tea base which I think is playing off the tartness of the greek yogurt. In addition, it is clear there is something more than honeyed banana contributing to the sweetness but its a little difficult to discern anything specifically mango.
Since I got this tea in a tea swap and am unsure how old it is, I thought perhaps there was some flavor deterioration which could account for the lack of its flavor in my smoothie. To test out my theory, I brewed up a cup of this tea just as a plain tea and got to sipping only to find a whole lot of fresh, ripe mango juiciness atop a slightly metallic ceylon base. A really nice mango breakfast tea actually because it tastes like a mango flavored tea as opposed to just mango.
At the end of the day, both beverages were good. I believe the tea did add to the flavor of the smoothie though not as much as I hoped. Next time I will play around with the ingredients to try and coax out more tea flavor.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Capital Teas Ltd
Description
This tea does not appear to be on the website anymore but click below for teas that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!