Blueberry Lemon Muffin Darjeeling

Sample Sipdown! (31)

Luckily, I looked this one up and saw that it’s a Darjeeling base before I steeped it!

I’m not sure how fond I am of the lemon flavoring in these AQ2T blends… It’s almost floor cleaner-ish. Not quite, but almost.

The Darjeeling base is interesting here, but the blueberry tastes very candy-like to me. Combined with the almost-cleaner lemon note, it comes off as very artificial-tasting. And I’m not really tasting anything cake-like here.

It’s a shame, as I really love blueberry-lemon muffins. The ones I make also have a cardamom crumble on top.

Here’s the recipe, it’s amazeballs:
http://www.callmecupcake.se/2014/09/blueberry-lemon-muffins-with-cardamom.html

(P.S. – I put less cardamom in the topping – about half of what the recipe calls for)

This was a free sample that came with my order. I don’t believe that I’ve ever tried Darjeeling tea before either. So it’ll be interesting to see if I pick up on it in this blend.

The dry leaf smells very bright full of blueberry and lemon notes. It also smells like soda has a sort of sweet carbonated smell to it.
I felt like agave might work better than honey in this tea. I didn’t add milk because I felt like that wouldn’t fit very well with this tea which turned out to be a good decision.

Tasting Note: I expected this to be very bright and citrusy. It wasn’t at all what I expected. The blueberry and lemon really blended together and create this cup of rich, slightly buttery goodness. The Darjeeling blends really nicely with the other flavors. I don’t taste the rooibos at all which is nice. This tea leans closer to a blueberry black tea in taste with some lemon. It doesn’t have bright pops of citrus and is more rich than citrusy. I can see the muffin aspect of this tea but am conflicted in terms of how it matches it’s name. Blueberry lemon muffins usually have pops of citrus which is what I was missing in this blend. It’s still a very enjoyable cup.

Sipdown! 23/365

Drank this and its resteep and barely noticed except for a hint or two of blueberry (mind you, I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention). My original rating seems pretty accurate – I enjoyed the tea, and probably would have noticed the flavouring more on a day where I wasn’t eating a bunch of strongly-flavoured foods!

Hot, with some freshly sliced lemons tossed into the mug too.

I’m sure it’s partly because I added actual lemon to this cup, but this was super tasty and very heavy on the lemon; sweet sort of pastry lemon notes, with some tang and acidic follow up to them. There’s this local bakery in town that sells lemon cranberry muffins, and they’ve got these really thick muffin tops that have an almost ‘crust’ of sugar crystals sprinkled on top; they crack when you bite into them, and then you hit the most fluffy, moist muffin afterwards with this burst of lemon and berry – and I just deeply found myself going back to that imagery, but with blueberry.

Lots, and lots of ‘pow’ to the flavour.

Enjoying a second steeping of this today. It’s really nice and a little dessert like. I’m getting close to a sip down on this and it is one I’m sure I’ll miss.

Now this is an interesting experience. A Darjeeling rooibos blend? How unusual! I love Darjeeling, and have less friendly experience with rooibos, but its good blueberry in it, so hey, its worth a shot.
My initial impression is that the rooibos is adding sweetness to it, but that particular woody sweetness is stronger than the Darjeeling. That’s too bad, I’d love to have some more presence from the black tea base.
There is a nice quality to blueberry, though! And I do get a sense of the muffin, for which I probably need to give credit to the rooibos for. This tea does what it says it will, conjures up an image of the blueberry lemon muffin.
So I’d say this is a solid blend, my own general dislike of rooibos notwithstanding, and would recommend it to anyone seeking those flavors.

I wrote a tangent a few posts ago about my Crisis of Spirit over blueberry. No new blueberry tea was making my life sparkle. I was trying to live a new life in a post-apocalyptic Non-Blueberry wasteland. It was lonely. I couldn’t look into mirrors without shame.

Then I tasted this. Ahhh. Back to 2016, where society looks pretty solid (except for the Trump thing), and I like blueberry again.

This is a rich, round tea with a really strong citrusy-lemon taste that balances out the blueberry.

It’s a symbiosis.

Blueberry and Lemon ride on a bicycle built for two, into a sunset of love.

I do like the rooibos and black tea combo base, it creates a bit of sweetness but also a nice amount of flavour from the tannins. It brewed a dark amber because of the black tea in it.

This tastes like a lemon poppy seed muffin to me, but with a bit of blueberry flavour added. It is quite flavourful, although I would like liked more cakey flavour (almond, caramel, or vanilla maybe?) I’m not getting any butter or cream notes like I thought I would, but this is still a nice blend.

I messed this sample up…great. Boiling water and soaked for three minutes.

I taste the blueberry and lemon a little bit but then a flat rooibos. Really flat rooibos. I’m thinking the flatness has to do with higher temperature…

More after it cools down…

Better after it cools down and second steep at 190 in 6 minutes. Blueberry and lemon are a really good combo. Cudos to Lauren for successfully mimicking the buttery finish of a muffin and the kind of density you get with it. The lemon really fuses with the roibos making it fruitier. I’m still not too sure about the rooibos with this Darjeeling. I like the Darjeeling a lot and it makes me wonder what it really tastes like on its own. The rooibos otherwise was fairly dominant.

Good if you like lemon and blueberry, and a good tea overall, but I prefer Lauren’s other ones. Namely a lot of her limited editions. Top few: Vanilla Cider Panna Cotta, The Key Lime Pie Oolong (maybe, about equal to the next one), Eggnog Poundcake, Cherry Wassail, Cherry Chocolate Latte Oolong, and the Chestnut Caramel Keemum