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This is the eighth of the 12 days of Christmas Teas! I am happy this one was included because I was very curios about it. Chocolate and tea sound like a great idea, but unfortunately, I have only tried 1 chocolate tea that really made me think “Wow, this really tastes like chocolate”! So I am very skeptical when I see a new chocolate tea.

The little packet smelled a whole lot like Malted ChocoMatte. If had a hint of fruitiness to it, but in all honesty, it did smell quite a bit like chocolate. The black tea leaves had a few cocoa nibs in it that worked nicely with the idea of chocolate flavored tea.

Once brewed (in my marvelous, best purchase ever!) Breville, the chocolate smell dissipated just a bit and the black tea scent appeared. Unsweetened it was a bit too bitter for a chocolate tea, so I added a bit of sweetener. Once again, it reminded me of Malted ChocoMatte. The taste is very similar, except that it is black tea rather than matte. All in all, a pretty good chocolate tea. Not quite hot chocolate, but a tasty dessert tea that I really enjoyed!

I have been awful about keeping up with tea logs during busy busy Christmas preparations both at work and at home. Still, today’s tea of the day from the 52teas 12 Days of Christmas made me smile and deserves a bit of my time to be written about.

This tea smells deliciously minty (spearmint) as soon as you open the packet. The dark green leaves with bits of marshmallow root are fittingly coherent with the idea of a graveyard. The little pieces of marshmallow root look strangely like gravestones amount the greenness of the tea leaves. Beautiful to look at!

While brewing, it smell quite a bit like root beer (surely due to the spearmint). The resulting light yellow cup of tea is light and refreshing. Unsweetened, the mint is the main flavor. Sweetened, the creaminess becomes more prominent and the mint takes over in the aftertaste.

I loved it! I finished my entire little pack of it today! I just might have to buy some of this before the week ends! :)

Oh December… The Sunday of months… The month that flies by and is full of tasty food, beautiful decorations and lots of good company. Sadly, it is so busy and goes so fast, that quite a few things go unappreciated! Tea gives me a chance to sit down sip and enjoy the moment! I am trying to have as much of my seasonal teas as possible before the first day of 52teas 12 days of Christmas! I am so excited for it!

This tea had so much hype around it, that I couldn’t wait to try it. It took my a while, but I have finally got around to it. It really deserves the hype! I loved the pumpkin cheesecake last year, and I love it with the caramel just the same!

The dry tea smells spicy and seasonal. I get a hint of pumpkin and a bit of creamy caramel as well. The leaves are small and dotted with yellow petals. Perfect to fit in with the now past Thanksgiving colors.

Once brewed, the dark liquor makes my mouth water with the promise of tastiness. Unsweetened it is not quite as smooth as I would like it to be. Sweetened, it is delicious. Just the right amount of spice to not completely overshadow the tea flavor. The caramel hides out towards the end of each sip, hanging out with the hint of pumpkin. A deliciously achieved tea. I am really happy I got to try it!

Now… To wait until the first day to open my first mystery 12 days of Christmas tea… :)

My family is having a Thanksgiving lunch today! I am so excited!!!! Even though I am vegetarian, I still love everything about Thanksgiving! The smell of the food, the Christmas music, the company!! To start of my day with a smile, as soon as I was done running I made myself a delicious Pumpkin Chai Latte!!

The dry leaves with pumpkin sprinkles make me smile every time! The smell is very sweet and pumpkin bread like. It doesn’t quite reach my spice requirement, but that can be easily fixed with a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon!

I frothed up my milk and made my tea in my double walled Bodum cup. It smelled like joy! My Mom walked by and asked if I decided to bake pumpkin bread, this of course made me smile and I made her try my tea. She loved it! I get points for making my coffee loving Mom admit to really liking a tea!!

I can honestly say that last year I did not love this tea. I am not sure what changed… I still acknowledge that it must be a latte to be really tasty, but it is really tasty! Today, it was the perfect tea to start the day off with a smile! I think I will need another cup of this with Thanksgiving dessert!!! :)

Upping the rating a bit!

I am sipping a hot pumpkin pie matcha latte while sitting alone at the kitchen table after a looong work day. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and my Mom has gone to the US to visit my brother and uncles, aunts, and Grandma for Thanksgiving… I wish I could be there celebrating! My Mom always makes a great Thanksgiving dinner even though we are in Ecuador and invites all of the Ecuadorian family over to celebrate. Now, I really miss having all the love and delicious food around. Thankfully, I have a wonderful boyfriend and friends who have organized a dinner on Friday to make up for it. Still, I miss my family and wish they were here!!!

I am going to take advantage of this quite moment with my tea and dog to make a Thanksgiving Pumpkin pie matcha toast to my Steepster family! I am very thankful to have all of you around! It is great to have so many amazing people to share something I love with! To be able to ramble about tea related thoughts that I know only you guys would understand, also to ramble about unrelated stuff (happy and sad!) and to get feedback and caring from all of you! I am thankful to be part of this wonderful group and hope that it is long lived and that we will enjoy tea and rambling a for many years to come!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! :)

Thanksgiving is coming! :) Even though I am in Ecuador, my Mom is American and we have grown up loving and celebrating Thanksgiving as the beginning of the holiday season. I love everything about it! The food (except the turkey… Being vegetarian, I miss out on that bit of it!) and especially the Pumpkin Pie!!! My mom makes it fresh since here in Ecuador there is no way to buy canned pumpkin! So, pumpkin matcha!?! From Red Leaf Tea? An absolute must have! I bought it and saved it for a moment when I felt Thanksgiving was near enough! The time has come! Now, for the tea review…

I opened the golden package (yes, it is really golden! :) ) and was flooded with pumpkin pie spices! It smelled deliciously festive! There is something about cinnamon and nutmeg that immediately kick starts me into the Holidays. This was just right!

I drink my matcha unsweetened and without milk. So that is how this one got prepared. I drank half a cup of it and realized that this tea needed to be drunk sweetened and as a latte. Imagine unsweetened pumpkin pie… not really something that sounds delicious. So I added milk and sweetener and I got a perfect matcha pumpkin pie latte! It really tasted like liquid pumpkin pie with a bit of green tea flavor added for extra tastiness! It is absolutely delicious! Super tasty! I love how rich and creamy it is, even though I added skim milk.

So, to sum it up, if you want a pumpkin pie tea that will make the best latte ever, this is most definitely it! If you like Pumpkin Pie, you need to try this matcha. You can find it here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/pumpkin-pie-matcha.html .

I am sooo happy I splurged on a bunch of David’s Tea while in New York!!! I feel like the last time I placed an order I missed the ones that I would really love and got some that didn’t quite work for me. So this time, after making the vendor kindly make me sniff at every single tea and spending over $100 later… I have a collection of deliciousness to enjoy!!! Thanks David’s Tea!!! I am thrilled! Now if only I could get them to ship to Ecuador, I would be the happiest girl ever!

This tea was available to taste the day I went to purchase my teas. Of course, one taste was enough to get me hooked on it! The dry leaf looked delicious with the banana pieces and strong black tea scent… Oh dear… Must have 4 ounces (and a free tin…). And so 4 ounces were added to my long list of teas that I would be purchasing that day.

Now, at home, I brewed 2 teaspoons to 500ml of water in my fabulous new Breville. This is one of those teas that will make an entire room smell delicious. Everyone in the kitchen asked if banana bread was in the oven. Smiling, I said, “Nope! It is my delicous banana pie tea that I bought from David’s Tea!”. So of course, everyone, including my tea clinical brother, tried it. For the first time ever, everyone liked it! They all agreed that it tasted exactly like banana bread!!!

I love it. You can clearly taste the black tea base, which is pleasantly astringent without being bitter. The banana flavor is incredibly natural tasting. It tasted, in all honesty, like fresh baked home made banana bread! The texture was creamy and rich, almost as if milk had been added. I didn’t taste chocolate, but really, it was perfect without out it.

This is really, a tea worth travelling to another continent to get. Trust me, if you like tea and banana bread or muffins, you will love this tea!!!

I am back at home from my NYC trip, and… My brand new BREVILLE made it all the way back to Ecuador and through customs with my in one intact piece!!! Oooohhhh I am soooo happy! Yes, I did receive an odd look from my boyfriend and mom when they saw me arrive carrying the box, and yes they are shocked at how much it costs, but it is completely and totally worth it!

I bought it in William Sonoma, my heart was set on it. I walked in and zoned in on it. Sadly they told me they had run out of them. I almost cried! I had saved up for it and even psychologically prepared to carry it home on the long trip… But I hadn’t even considered the idea that they might be out of it! Thankfully, I decided to ask if I could buy the one on display, and I could in fact, and even got a discount!!!! So, I was happy once again!

I have used it every day since I got home. I set the timer and in the morning my kitchen smells like tea and it makes getting ready for work 100 times more enjoyable. Also, when I get home late at night, it heats the water and my tea in a jiffy!

I was a tiny bit worried that the altitude of Quito and the change in air pressure that it causes would make the temperature fiction not work right… Surprisingly, I have had no problems. My tea tastes better than ever with the right temperate water! Usually water boils at a lower temperature here, so when it attempts to get the water to boiling temp it goes a bit crazy and bubbles extremely, but it manages!

So far I have not had any terrible issues with leaves sneaking through the basket, though I will not even try to make rooibos because I am sure that will be a mess! Also, I have to make sure to wipe it between flavored steeps because the flavor does tend to hang around for a while afterword and you can’t submerge it in water to wash thoroughly… Really, those are the only cons…

As for pros… There are sooo many! Waking up to freshly brewed tea, having your tea stay warm, having tea make it self and not worry about over brewing… I can go on and on! I have gotten in the habit of making enough of my morning tea to have a cup with breakfast and take a thermos of it to work with me. Delicious tea habit! Yay!

I have given myself the best early Christmas present ever!!!

I only have a few minutes before I have to go to work, but I wanted to share that I had this tea for breakfast!

It tastes nothing like any butter cake that I have had, but oh is it tasty! It is a super creamy light lemon blend. I enjoyed it very much with my bread and jelly while I pondered over ordering the Christmas 12 days of tea… Hmmm….

The dry leaf smells citrusy. Once brewed the dark blend becomes deliciously lemony. The flavor is creamy, and in fact reminds me quite a bit of lemon cream pie! I had it slightly sweetened and it definitely made my day start with a tasty smile!

Enjoy your Thursday everyone! :)

Yay! I’m in New York! After the horrible hurricane my flight got cancelled. I was comming because I had been invited to the marathon race directors program and was super excited…. Eventually thing worked out, flights started leaving again. I finally got to New York, only to find out that the racewas cancelled the next day. I am really sorry for all the people that were affected by the hurricane, I hope that everyone is OK! But I am also really sad for all of the runners who worked really hard to be able to run the race and payed to get to NYConly to find out the race was cancelled 2 days before the race….

On a positive note, I made it into my first David’s Tea shop!!! I had to really control myself and be frugal… Or as frugal as you can possibly be when you love tea and walk into a David’s Tea Shop!!! After I finally picked out my tea, I got a free cup of this. Oh my WOW vanilla and smooth sweetness. I have never had anything like this. It is by far the most enchanting and well achieved flavored vanilla oolong I have ever had.

I didn’t get to go through the entire brewing process on my own, since it was made for me in a paper cup, but I think that I managed to pull out the little Baggie in time for it to not oversteep. The little bit of scent that made it through the opening in the lid was incredible. Pure vanilla with a hint of oolong to remind you that you aren’t drinking vanilla extract, but true delicious tea!

Each sip was increasingly smooth and the vanilla wrapped around me in the cold of the wind on NYC in November. I was in tea heaven… The vanilla was a vanilla bean ice cream sort of vanilla. The kind that promises to be sweet, smooth and provide instant smiles.

All in all my trip to NYC, while not productive, has been great fun and great for Christmas shopping. I will surely enjoy my last day here!!!

Also, I have to share this, I bought a BREVILLE ONE TOUCH!!! I did it! I gave in and bought the last one they had at William Sonoma!!! I even got 10% discount on it since it was on display! I can’t wait to go home and try it! I will take it with me carry on… Wish me luck with the trip and it getting through security! I would be devasted if it didn’t!