Apple Cinnamon French Toast

I fell in love with blend last August when CameronB and I did a swap right around the first week of the fall semester. I vividly remember it because I was only a few days in and already swamped with assignments.

As for the tea… it’s just a warm cuppa cozy comfort. I always recommend Simpson and Vail to my friends that are newer to tea because they have so many flavors and types on a college student-friendly budget/price. There’s really a blend for everyone and it’s always so lovely to try something new. I’ve been going there for years and there’s still a ton of blends I haven’t tried yet.

I prefer this blend hot, black, with a touch of honey (usually without it though) just to bring out the maple/french toast flavor a bit more. It’s just so comforting and cozy, it tastes like maple apple crisp to since the apple is the primary flavor. I love it, it’s a stash essential. I’m glad I stocked up on it for the upcoming fall.

Extra info****

My cupboard does not reflect my current sip-down basket. I’m so close to finishing everything that I want to get rid of this summer already. Everything in my cupboard is what I have been gathering (hoarding) for fall. As I go through the summer, there’s a few more teas and essentials I want to grab and all hell will break loose on August 28th (first day of the semester) when I officially break into my fall stash/the currently updated cupboard.

The Steepster TTB arrived yesterday and is a behemoth of a box! My partner was like, “What the heck is this?!” I have a mercifully light week, schoolwork-wise, so I spent yesterday evening watching Netflix and going through the box, pulling out things to sample.

This was my breakfast tea, and it smelled amazing! Apples, cinnamon, maple… what’s not to love? I did think the flavor fell a little short, though — it was a bit thin, without a ton of body, and all those lovely scents didn’t translate to the flavor. I wanted more of everything in my sip. Maybe over-leafing it would help?

Wowza! The dry leaves smell so good! With a sloppy steep and no additives, I’m still catching it all: pan-fried apples, a little maple-osity, the stick-to-your-lips bread and egg thing. Just enough for one more cup with a little milk and sweetener. Thanks, Michelle!

Based on the high reviews here, I did this as a sample with my recent semi-large S&V Order. I also tossed in Apple Cinnamon Coffeecake, but have not tried that one yet.

This one does apples well, and I never say that lightly, as in many companies blends apples are mainly a feature advertised and a pretty tea visual but without much flavor. This time the mild and fresh taste of crisp apples is actually present, and it’s not false.

I started with 3 minute steep, but adjusted after taste to brew another two minutes.

The tea and toast flavor come through very well as lukewarm stage too. It’s a light and fun fall tea – I did not eat any breakfast or brunch with it so almost feel like I cheated, but I so rarely have french toast I think it’s been like 10 years – at least I can have it a bit in the tea, even though I’m not getting as much of the toast, but instead more of the apples.

I will see if that changes with other brews. Wondering if this will be good with a touch of maple syrup sweetener too.

I wanted to try some more of the new teas from CameronB and I knew we had a cinnamon raisin bagel and thought this would be perfect with it. My brain had done a mash up of the names of two of the teas together and I thought I was making something called Apple Cinnamon Chai rather than Apple Cinnamon French Toast. (Another tea sent was the herbal Apple Pie Chai)

When Ashman walked in the kitchen, he said, “I smell maple syrup.”

This was not a good thing to hear. He dislikes the smell of maple syrup because he says that when the children were little, they would sometimes eat waffles with maple syrup and no matter how we scrubbed them the smell remained, leading to his current dislike of said aroma.

Surprisingly, he liked this tea! A lot, in fact. He said it was sharp and a little biting to him plain, but that sugar smoothed it out so much that he didn’t even need to add milk. There are very few black teas that he likes plain, so I had sugar already on the table for him.

I drank it plain, and it is sharp enough that I thought there must be a little clove or ginger in it, but there is no mention of either unless it is part of the “apple cinnamon French toast flavoring”. I was not tempted to add anything to it to smooth it, as it went really well with our simple breakfast. It is probably just a sharper cinnamon in use, because Penzey’s Vietnamese Cinnamon is quite sharp and bold like this.

The aroma is so powerful with this tea. I can easily see it becoming a winter morning comfort craving.

Thank you so much, CameronB!

Some of you may know that my tea preference skews heavily to unflavored, loose leaf teas. I only buy flavored teas as teabags for the convenience. But I am always open to trying anything that lands in my hands through the generosity of others <3

That said…

This is a dead ringer for apple cinnamon french toast. It’s really amazing how this company has nailed the aroma and flavor. It’s a little strong with the maple syrup flavoring and cinnamon but definitely not cloying. The apple shines bright as a warm skillet apples kind of flavor. There’s the slightly eggy and bready french toast taste. All of it is there and harmonious.

That said…

The base black tea is weak. Like Simpson & Vail’s Almond Sugar Cookie, the flavoring is really kind of mind-blowing but I want so much more from the base, some underlying complexity, some texture. I like nuance and mouthfeel. A lot. And flavored teas typically use cheap bases that produce thin, one-dimensional brews as the experience delivery vehicle.

Very much recommended for accurately capturing the namesake of the tea! Even for somebody like me who is pretty much turned off by maple syrup flavoring. When Kiki comes back from housesitting in several weeks, I’ll get her impression. Like me, she’s not a fan of maple flavor since it’s so cloying but I hope she is pleasantly surprised. Thank you for the sample, Cameron :)

I got Tea Mail from Shae! Yay!
This tea smells awesome, as if I’ve just been in the kitchen cooking apples and cinnamon, with a good whiff of maple syrup too. As for the taste, I’m wondering if I used enough leaf because I find myself wanting more, more cinnamon or more apple or more both. The maple syrup is quite tasty but its suffering from my mental comparison to Cuppa Geek’s Morning Waffles. I’ll try again with more leaf and less water and I’ll add a sample to my next S&V order to experiment with. Thanks Shae for sharing this yummy tea.

2021 sipdown no. 18

Another fun one from S&V, courtesy of Cameron!

The tea is very much matched to the name, which is awesome. The scent is very reminiscent of French toast with syrup. The syrup flavour isn’t my favourite, sadly (in any tea, not just S&V). I am definitely an outsider with my thoughts on this one, but Lex at least agreed with me haha, but did say it tasted exactly like a sweet, syrup-y French toast tea!

Discovery Advent Tea #25
FRENCH TOAST! Not bad for a sweet tea. Reminds me of the one I used to sell through that dreaded Tea Queens company…

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #13

Finished off the single serving that was in the box, and it was very good.

Definitely reminded me of French Toast – the good brioche kind! Sweet with maple and brown sugar notes, the perfect amount of warming cinnamon and a kiss of sweet apple. This is a tea that I would totally want in my cupboard for a decadent fall/autumn type of sweet flavour profile!