Red Velvet Cake

I was really looking forward to this tea, but I’m a bit disappointed. A lot of t he reviewers say it’s sweet, but I just don’t taste it. It’s pretty bitter to me and I can barely taste the sweetness I was expecting.

Am I doing something wrong, fellow steepsters? Perhaps I steeped it too long? Or used too much tea?

Because having the flu means sampling all the teas I just bought!

Smells like chocolate cake, very indulgent. The sprinkles are fun but probably unnecessary?

Brewed with boiling water for about 5 minutes in my new Adagio IngenuiTEA brewer.

Pretty good, I think I’ll brew it stronger next time to get more of the chocolatey flavor. Definitely needs sugar given the dessert like nature of the tea.

Sigh. I wanted to like you, really I did! You promised excitement and adventure, but it turned out that you have no personality. You’re weak and bland, and I just feel nothing for you. As tea goes, you don’t have a strong enough leaf to demonstrate any character, and as far as red velvet cake – I detect none of that sweetness. No chocolate, no cake, no creaminess. All I taste is a weak tea with some generically sweet artificial flavouring. So bummed.

Maybe I’ll try this tea again one day to find out if the stuff I got was just not a good representative, but I won’t pay for it unless it drastically changes my mind somehow.

Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox Round #3 – Tea #9
This one actually does taste like red velvet cake, even if it uses some artificial to get there. But artificial and accurate is a good thing. It has a sweet syrupy flavor going on. The black tea itself is quite light though. The beets didn’t really make my cup redder than any black tea. The chocolate adds just a hint of chocolate, just like an actual red velvet. I like the flavor here, as it certainly fits the “cake tea” craving, probably more than most others I’ve tried.
Steep #1 // just boiled // 3-4min

This is really sweet on its own, I am glad I didn’t add any more sweetener, though my next cup will probably involve a dash of milk. It actually does taste like cake. It is very yummy, though not my most favorite ever. I normally prefer to trick myself into drinking teas like this after dinner for “dessert”, but the caffeine of this prevents me from doing that.

Been drinking bagged tea for years, but turned to loose leaf lately, mostly being a sucker for David’s Tea cute tea cups and accessories — I’m weak!!

So, in wanting to try a large sampling of teas without shelling out for 50g bags, I bought the Easter Tea Hunt sampler pack from the web specials section — score!!

Finally got around to trying Red Velvet Cake, but not sure how to describe the flavour of this tea. I was expecting it to taste like a warm inviting chocolate pillow of deliciousness, but it was more of a muted muddy concoction…and I was really turned off by the greasy red-coloured ring at top of my cup. Definitely not a favourite…

So, the first time I tried this it was a few months ago. It was a sample for one cup that Virginia gave me. Didn’t like it much then, but wanted to give it another shot.
So my thanks goes to Marzipan for this one!!
This one smells pretty much EXACTLY like Della Terra Teas’ Birthday Cupcake! So that made me even more eager.
And when I began drinking it it tasted a lot like Birthday Cupcake…until the chocolate flavor hit. I don’t know why…but I really don’t like the chocolate flavor in this tea. It was sweet and rich; almost the perfect dessert tea.
But then the chocolate flavor began taking over. I have no idea why I don’t like it. I usually like chocolate flavored teas…but I don’t know. Just doesn’t work for me this time I guess. Oh well. Glad to confirm my feelings of this tea!
Thank again, Marzipan! :D

Total points for presentation for this tea. Red and white sprinkles! Milk and white chocolate chips! So pretty! It brews up a pretty reddish-brown color. The taste, though, falls a little flat. I’ve been finding that I prefer a lot of the David’s Teas I’ve been trying without adding anything (which is unusual for me), so I tried it first without sweetener. It tasted like vaguely creamy black tea. So, I added some sweetener and that did wake up the flavors quite a bit! Then I added some frothed milk which was a nice addition. Now the taste has a white chocolate start with a milk chocolate finish. It’s actually quite good and if they had called this tea something like chocolate decadence, it would have been spot on. But when I think of red velvet cake, the essential part is the cream cheese icing. AMIRIGHT?? I was hoping for that element and ended up a bit disappointed because it wasn’t present. This tea is still a super tasty dessert tea, just a little simple. Plus I prefer dark chocolate. Thanks Virginia for setting some of this aside for me amid the red velvet frenzy!

My baby girl has been crying and crying and screaming when I put her to bed these days. It is very stressful and it wears me down. I usually don’t drink black tea in the evening, but I’ve had it rough and this is cake flavoured, and it’s not like I ever go to bed before 2-3 o clock anyways so WHATEVER I’M DOING IT. I’m a rebel. An anarchist.

So I measure it out and dump it in my cup while the water’s boiling. Wait WHAT?! Virginia, this is not instant coffee, what are you doing? I stick my fingers at the bottom of the mug and push the tea down into my steeper. The aroma of the dry leaf reminds me of the Oh Canada and Birthday Cake rooibos, in the sense that it has the same sort of sweet smokiness. No red velvet cake here. I really hope this doesn’t taste like those other ones because that would just make me sad.

Steeped it for 5 minutes in 96 degree water. The liquor is beautiful and dark, and the scent is cake-y but not in an unpleasant way. Ok, here goes, look at me, breaking the rules: first sip.

I like it. No wait, this may be love.

When I sip it, I get mostly black tea, nothing to write home about, but good. But THEN, when I exhale, all the sweet delicious cake flavour hits my tongue, like I’ve been baking a cake in my lungs. This is gooood. No dessert rooibos disaster here. This is wonderful.

Smells good in the bag. Steeped it seems a little weak. Adding sugar helps. I can pick out a creaminess, some chocolate… it’s okay, but I might pass on this bag to someone else. What I don’t like is the ring of red around my mug from the sprinkles. I know it is kind of novel to have flashy color in your tea, but I’m a bit of a party pooper and would prefer to not have artificial colors in my tea.