Butter Toffee Cream

Another from Tiffany :) Thank you! While looking for this one on Steepster, there is so much coconut (fresh looking) in the blend that I was expecting a name with “coconut”. Such finely chopped ingredients here – it looks like mostly coconut and mostly rooibos. Do you ever do that thing where you go to set the mug down, but then take another sip, go to set the mug down, then go to take another sip…about a dozen times? That was this tea… and the other Dessert By Deb tea I had yesterday. But I guess it’s usually every tea for me! The suggested two teaspoons seems to work for these teas. Plenty of sweet, as wow, it seems like every type of sweetener is here except for stevia. Plenty of buttery coconut flavor. Though I do wish the balance was better here that some of the rooibos would be replaced with more black tea. But I have been drinking this one a lot due to the huge amount of coconut. Inspired by maple snow candy, which I would definitely have at least a couple times, as a child in NY! But with the coconut here representing snow (I would imagine), it’s a bit hard to make that connection between so much coconut and what should be maple. It’s delicious anyway, if you are looking for a sweet coconut tea.
Steep #1 // 2 teaspoons for a full mug // 20 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 5-6 minute steep

Sipdown!

So this was one of the free samples I chose with my first Dessert by Deb order a few weeks ago. I wanted to try it but balked a bit at the amount of coconut, so I chose to get a sample instead of a 25g pouch.

Honestly, the coconut here doesn’t bother me, although it does make the cup rather oily. At least it’s natural oil and not melted chocolate chips or something… Anyway! This is more butterscotch than toffee to me. It has a sweet buttery quality to it, but lacks the darker burnt sugar notes that toffee generally has. I think the rooibos make sense here, as rooibos tends to have some caramel-y notes to it which go well with this blend. The coconut maybe seems slightly out of place, but it does add a nice creaminess.

I did overleaf this (as usual) so it’s quite sweet. Plus it was the bottom of the pouch, so I’m sure there was plenty of brown sugar and maple dust.

Overall, it’s pleasant but not something I feel the need to order. The coconut is a little discordant for me, plus it’s a bit too sweet and rich with the coconut oil. But I’m happy to have tried it! :)

I requested this tea as a sample because “Tea with Jann”, a lovely Canadian tea vlogger, recommended it! She said it was one of her favourites from the Dessert by Deb collection.

Unfortunately, I was not the biggest fan of this tea (despite wanting to like it!). Although this might come down to my personal preferences, since I normally dislike red rooibos. To me, this tea tasted buttery with hints of rooibos and coconut.

However, Deb is a wonderful person, and has some other fantastic blends that I adore. I think this one was just not for me.

This was very generously included as a sample in my order. Unfortunately, I really did not care for it. Very, very buttery. The rooibos and coconut are also extremely strong, which are not flavors I generally enjoy. Luckily, my boyfriend really liked it. So, he got to enjoy a few cups of it.

Over leafed this a bit in a successful mission to sip down this sample that VariaTEA sent my way. I think I like it better this time. It is super buttery with an almost thick feeling. The coconut seems to blend into the buttery taste and not stand out much on it’s own. The maple crystals aren’t distracting in here like I found them to be in a different DBD blend. There is something in the sip that starts off like it wants to be tart and then quickly changes it’s mind and disappears. I still don’t get the toffee notes. I feel like buttercream frosting would have been a better name for this, especially if there was vanilla in there. Or maybe a pun off of Paula Dean’s apparent tendency to drink melted butter? Man I’m glad her window of fame has appeared to come to a close. It was a little jarring seeing her super excited intense smile all over the place for a while when you weren’t expecting it! Teeth so white and glowing you know she never drinks tea. It’s unnatural to not drink tea. Just can’t trust a smile like that. ;D
Back to this cup of tea… It has a nice long buttery finish to it which I like and might be my favorite part about each sip. I’m not getting rooibos standing out at all which I appreciate. It’s a good cup that I’d have again if we crossed paths, but not something I’m moved to buy.

Sipdown!

I think the coconut and the honey are my biggest issues with this tea. When these two ingredients are at their strongest they dominate the blend. The latter in particular accentuates the rooibos in a way I do not enjoy and that makes me think of honey cough drops (also, why not just use the less medicinal, sweeter honeybush instead of rooibos + honey?). Bee pollen, which I generally like, also adds a sweet floral quality that exacerbates the medicinal quality for me today.

There are moments when this blend works. The aftertaste is creamy, with hints of vanilla, and the cup smells pleasantly buttery. It’s not a terrible latte or cold brew either! I’m just not terribly into coconut as a sub/filler ingredient at this point, and I’ve never been fond of rooibos/black tea blends (I don’t get it), or teas with added sweeteners. This blend has brown sugar, maple syrup, and honey and it’s quite sweet but also thinner than I’d like a “toffee” tea.

Blech. This one might be coming back to you variaTEA. Just. Nope. I mean it was al ost drinkable but then I’d take a sip and be like WHAT is this? Yes there’s a bit of creaminess to it…and I can imagine butter toffe on some sips but overall it’s just rooibosy, coconut cream something,

Worked in office today – I’ve been having all my tea orders sent to the office even though I’ve been working from home mostly, it’s just still so much more convenient that way. So, I came in today to a package from the super lovely VariaTEA who coordinated group orders of both Dessert by Deb and Tea Runners and then sent teas from both my way – along with a few other samples I was excited to try from her cupboard…

As she talked about with her first notes for this company, they’ve kind of blown up in the instagram tea blogging world and because everyone else was excited about them that made me excited to try them too!

I tend to avoid coconut blends because of the stability issues with coconut, even though I often really love the flavour, and Deb seems to use a lot of coconut – but I picked some up anyway. It was the toffee element of this that drew me in the most – I dream of good toffee and caramel teas, but I’m so often disappointed because it’s such a tricky flavour to pull off in a tea. I have to say, I don’t think she’s nailed it here. However, with that said…

I did really enjoy the tea! While I didn’t get toffee, I was taken back to a more nostalgic flavour profile that I love and miss – and that’s DAVIDsTEA’s Buttered Rum black tea blend! I’m sure what made me think of it was the combination of that buttery/butterscotch flavour and coconut, since those were the non tea ingredients in Buttered Rum. The mouthfeel was a bit oily and the flavour slightly thin, but it still took me to a magical memory.

So I’m feeling quite positive about the blend overall!

At times this screamed butter toffee to me and at other times I just tasted the rooibos and I’m not really sure why it was there to begin with. So overall ok but not amazing.