Just like a good Valentine’s date, An Evening with Eros tea blend comes bearing roses and chocolate.
There’s enough of both ingredients that you can see chocolate chips and petals scattered throughout the dry leaf. The namesake of this blend is Eros, the Greek god of love, and since this is a decaf rooibos blend, it’s the perfect brew for a late night out or a cozy evening in.
The vanilla rooibos is the star player in this blend, coupled with gentle swirls of chocolate and flowers. Raisins and elderberries bring additional sweetness and play well with the natural woody and caramel notes of the rooibos.
This blend is easy and drinkable, though not the most unusual blend I’ve tried. I think this tea is best for its novelty for a romantic occasion.
With Valentine’s Day on my mind, I find myself reaching for An Evening with Eros to help treat myself to something festive and to keep me warm on a February night.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type:Roobios
Where to Buy: Banff Tea Co.
Description:
Blended exclusively for Valentine’s Day as a romantic treat, this rooibos based concoction will add a little love at any time of the year (or day…or night!)
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Bake a Valentine’s Cake to Go With Your Tea
Valentine’s Day. A time for everything pink and rosy. Strawberries and chocolate galore. If you are looking to recreate that sweet, romantic, dessert feeling I would recommend brewing up a cup of Chocolate Covered Strawberries by Shuswap Infusions. This black and oolong blend has dark chocolate and strawberry notes, and it even has flower petals in the dry leaf.
Whether you’re celebrating yourself or being cute with a sweetheart, it’s hard to go wrong with chocolate. So I recommend making an old family recipe (that we clearly just took from the King Arthur Flour cookbook) for a super-easy, super-tasty, one-pan vegan mocha cake. Trust me, even those of you who are baking-impaired can make this one. We call it the Stir-Crazy Cake.
For best results, mix the ingredients in the pan from which you will serve the cake. This won’t be a problem if you use a cute heart-shaped pie dish or cake pan for the occasion.
Mix directly in your pan:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
Mix dry ingredients with a whisk or fork.
Make three wells (three divots or holes) in the dry ingredients.
Pour the wet ingredients into the wells, only one ingredient into each well:
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Pour 1 cup cold coffee over all ingredients. If you don’t want a mocha cake, just use cold water instead. [For those kitchen-oriented mad scientists out there, maybe adding a cold cup of your favorite dessert or strawberry tea could be a nice substitute as well. I haven’t experimented myself, but now I’m curious to try it… ]
Stir all the ingredients together until well blended. Really make sure you mix the cake (hence the “Stir-Crazy” name). Get all the dry ingredients mixed in from the bottom and edges of the pan.
Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, without any crumbs.
Serve straight from the pan to your plate. If you’re getting overloaded from chocolate, brew up something sweet and fruity to go with the cake, maybe a classic like Raspberry Zinger from Celestial Seasonings to help balance out the dark chocolate decadence.
Happy baking!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black/Oolong
Where to Buy: Shuswap Infusions
Description:
Just in time for Valentines Day! The name of this tea is just as delicious as it sounds. For a real treat, serve it as a latte garnished with shaved chocolate
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Ganymede Matcha Tea Blend by MoongleamTeaShoppe
Hello Tea Friends!
My head is spinning at the idea of a Matcha, cocoa, mint, and orange peel combination and it’s something I have no idea of what to expect. Frankly that is why I chose this blend to try, not only is it original but it’s also from a small Etsy store and I love to give smaller businesses a chance.
So lets have a look at the tea. what can I say?…It’s medium sized pieces of what I assume is cocoa and orange peel covered in a green Matcha dust with a few rough looking chopped leaves. It looks as adventurous as it sounds. Scent wise it smells chocolatey yet dry.
I think I will steep this at roughly 75C (on the milder side) and hope that the Matcha doesn’t become too astringent. But I still want to get the best out of the other ingredients so I don’t want to go too mild. Steeping time will also be a fairly quick 20 seconds. This is going in completely blind on a guess, I imagine it’s one of those teas you have to try and alter to taste and experiment with. But for now those are my parameter choices.
As soon as the water goes in the mint fills my nostrils and bursts through the cocoa. The colour is dark green and cloudy (thank you Matcha) and it bares a strong mint chocolate scent. It looks like used paint water but looks can be deceiving.
Okay so the first sip reveals bitter mint with some sweetness and some creamy cocoa behind it, leading to a dry yet refreshing after taste. The astringency is from the Matcha I think but it quickly fades into a creamy undertone before finishing with softer mint.It’s actually so rich it’s more like a black tea base than green. The orange is lost on me though.
A second steep with the same parameters reveals: less bitterness making it creamier and sweeter, the mint still being forefront. This is more like a traditional mint green tea with a touch of cocoa. Still dry but so easy to drink.
Think of it as a mint chocolate tea with some Matcha goodness thrown in for good measure. A strange combination but it actually makes a nice change to try something so different. My husband said it’s like a chocolate ice lolly that has melted a bit.
So unusual but nice, worth the try and I am happy to have tried a sample. If you’re looking for something different then it’s definitely worth a try.
Happy Steeping!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green Blend
Where to Buy: MoonGleam Tea Shoppe (Etsy)
Description: The rich, earthy flavor of matcha meets the sweetness of cocoa, mint, and orange peel.
The flavors combine wonderfully to create a wonderful interplay.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Ganymede Matcha Tea Blend by MoongleamTeaShoppe
I wasn’t sure how to prepare this tea at first. It’s matcha, so you should be able to just put it in the hot water and shake/whisk it up, right? Well, no, because there are lumps in it as well. The green lumps (I thought they might just be matcha powder caked together that would come apart in the cup) turned out to be bits of citrus peel coated in matcha, which made me realize that there was less matcha in my cup than I at first thought, so I just went ahead and dumped the rest of the sample in too.
When dry, this tea was green, but once steeped it turned a super-muddy brown. By that I mean that it was not just brown but also opaque even before I added milk. I’m going to assume this was from the chocolate. I could taste a hint of chocolate in the tea, although it was hidden way down under the mint still.
There is some bitterness to this tea, but I think that’s from the mint (because it tasted to me like mint tea that has been steeped a bit too long) rather than from the matcha. So next time I’d be more careful not to steep it quite so long. I was trying to give the citrus peel a chance to wake up, but I don’t think it stood a chance against the mint anyway.
Once I added some sugar and lots of milk, it tasted primarily of mint-chocolate, but still very heavy on the mint. I could hardly taste the matcha itself at all because of the mint, which could be a good thing if you don’t especially like matcha flavor but still want the energy that comes from it. With the addition of milk, the citrus became almost nonexistent– although not totally gone– kind of like a ghost. Sometimes I thought I caught a hint of it but I’m not totally sure and it wasn’t a very substantial hint anyway.
Looking at the ingredients list, I notice that there was black tea in this as well. I didn’t really notice it (as I said, before steeping everything was coated in matcha and afterward everything tasted strongly of mint). Maybe there wasn’t very much of it, because it certainly didn’t have a very strong presence in this tea blend.
So in conclusion, I’d say that if you like strongly minty mint chocolate matcha, this could be great for you. It would also be great as a functional breakfast tea because it has all the refreshing qualities of mint plus the caffeine from the matcha. I’m not sure I’d buy this particular blend but I sure had fun with the sample!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Moongleam Tea Shoppe
Description
The rich, earthy flavor of matcha meets the sweetness of cocoa, mint, and orange peel.
The flavors combine wonderfully to create a wonderful interplay.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Holiday Blend Alert! Snowball from Bluebird Tea Co.
I love Hostess Sno-Ball cakes. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Sno-Ball was a chocolate cake, filled with cream, covered in marshmallow, and crusted in coconut. Yeah, I know, it’s a lot to take in. Not to mention the cakes were dyed different colors for the holidays (orange for Halloween, red and green for Christmas, pink for whatever). As a kid, these cakes were the nectar of the gods. Into adulthood, we entered the dark ages when Hostess filed for bankruptcy and the snacks were no longer being manufactured. To help me cope with the loss, I took a stab at designing my own chocolate-coconut tea blend (it turned out pretty good). Since then, the Hostess recipes have been acquired by new companies and I can now find those tasty marshmallow cakes back on the shelves.
With all this in mind, it was an easy choice to order up a bag of Snowball tea from Bluebird Tea Co. I love this blend, it is no surprise to me that it has even won awards for its taste. Rich coconut and sweet chocolate are really pushed over the top with mini marshmallows. There’s a hot-chocolate coziness to this tea, made all the more decadent by the creamy coconut and cocoa shells. I take my tea black, without sugar or milk, but this is just the kind of tea that would make a fantastic dessert late with milk and whipped cream. I look forward to ordering more of Snowball tea from Bluebird Tea Co. to drink and to share before the season is over.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Bluebird Tea Co.
Description:
The chocolatey, marshmallow, coconut goodness of a gooey Snowball is one of the best sweet treats of Christmas and this year it is award-winning too! Our most famous Christmas tea blend scooped a Great Taste Award this year for it’s chocolate chips in plenty, coconut flakes in tons and a sprinkle of mini marshmallows to finish it off- The perfect Christmas Snowball.
This tea is no longer on the site but click below for what teas are
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!