Vanilla Frosted Carrot Cake (Limited Edition)

Sipdown (196/198)!

Well, I cold brewed the last of this and brought it to work. It did a great job of keeping me alert and on my feet; I had a horrible sleep last night. I think I got maybe two hours of sleep? I was sure I was going to just collapse while doing stock or that I’d make some horrible math mistake while on till, and give someone way too much change and be out at closing.

This was good right up until the last sip, by which I mean everything was tasty EXCEPT the last sip; it was kind of overwhelmingly carrot flavoured. TOO MUCH CARROT.

I’m sad this is gone though! Now that I’ve discovered how great (and consistent) it is as a cold brew, I’d stock it for that purpose – sadly this was limited edition so this is probably a very firm farewell.

So sad.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the steep time was nine hours or something like that?

Thanks TheTeaFairy for sending me this sample.

This is black tea (at least it’s a decent black tea). I’m getting nothing other than black tea. Zero flavor of any kind.

Filtered water 3 tsp/14 oz water 100C 3 minutes.

Shrug – moving on.

Major backlog sip down. As much as I love Butiki, this wasn’t my favourite. Love ginger, but there was a bit too much in here that covered up the other notes, methinks.

How appropriate, Yellow Submarine came on my iTunes. I owned this pair of Yellow Submarine Vans for all of 20 hours and returned them yesterday because they were very uncomfortable, even just standing in them indoors:

http://www.vans.com/shop/the-beatles-era-garden-true-white

Thank you so much Courtney for a sample of this! :)

Hm, this wasn’t bad! I could definitely taste carrot, although the vanilla notes didn’t shine through as much as I’d have liked them to. It was still very sweet but not exactly what I would call “frosted” much like what I got with Della Terra’s Carrot Cake. But this was rather enjoyable regardless and did subtly remind me of a carrot cake.

Props to Butiki for being vegan and using natural flavours – that gets a thumbs up in my book.

This was very good. Definitely tasted like real carrot and vanilla. I am not getting the “cake” as much but I am definitely liking this. Cream cheese icing would have made this amazing! I know….cream cheese is a super hard flavour to get in tea though.
I always look forward to all of Butiki’s flavoured blends

What a lovely surprise to find a sample of this in the box from TheTeaFairy !

I have to say I thought this would be way more flavourful. More carrot cake like, if you will. Maybe I’m used to the dessert teas from DAVID and Della Terra where you really get cake. I know butiki is usually more delicate. But then again, I had “Three Friends” and I found that tea to really deliver on the flavour promise, it wasn’t pussyfooting around that one!

Here I get a fairly strong base, stronger than the carrot cake or vanilla frosting. I do get the vanilla and yes, there is carrot cake but don’t expect this to be your dessert. Have some cake if you want it because this will not be standing in for the craving. This is tea. Remember. Tea.

Many thanks to the fairy who parted with this limited edition and no longer available tea. Hopefully it wasn’t too begrudgingly, I was thrilled to be able to taste it.

I’ve been going through my package of this rather quickly and I’ve yet to write a tea note so I decided to take a break from histology and do just that.

This is delicious! So much carrot-y goodness in every sip. The vanilla creates a nice mellowing of the flavour and there is just the perfect amount of spice. I had to order another package before it disappears!

My Butiki order came in yesterday so I decided to declare today a Butiki sample sip-down day. This was the sample I was most excited to try, because I absolutely love carrot cake. I was immediately impressed with the large chunks of carrot. The last carrot cake tea I tried used tiny little shavings that didn’t really contribute any flavor, but with Stacy’s blend I could actually taste the carrot. The spices were subtle, much more so than I expected, but I find that I enjoyed this even if I did want a bit more spice. Had they been more present and more like the carrot cake my husband bakes me for my birthday, they would have overpowered the more delicate flavors in the tea. The only thing I really missed having were the walnuts, it just isn’t carrot cake without them.

Had this yesterday afternoon. So glad to finally have some fall teas that feel like a real treat—I had a pumpkin spice latte at the airport to a) know firsthand of the zeitgeist, ha b) because it was SOMETHING to tide me over until I got to try all my new fall teas! This was lovely, the carrot, spice, and vanilla were all present. I even ate a sweet little piece of carrot afterward.

A friend of mine ordered this when I made my last Butiki order. She was not a fan and so I became the owner of what remained. Yay! She said to her it tasted like only carrots. She tends to like only very pronounced flavored teas, anything resembling straight tea just doesn’t do it for her so I see why she might not have liked this one. The base is amazing. It brings out the bread-y taste of the frosted carrot cake. I get a hint of carrot, and a hint of spice. At the end of each sip is the vanilla. I am brewing this at work and will have to take it home and add some sugar just to see if the spice is brought out a bit more. I really like this one!