Carrot Walnut Raisin (Carrot Cake)

After having the Maple Sugar earlier, I remembered that I should still have some of this gem in my cupboard. And I did – hiding behind a couple of canisters! Mmm, this is a wonderful way to end the evening. I’m getting a flavor tonight that I want to describe as peppery, but I don’t think there is pepper in the blend. Maybe it is the walnuts which I do not eat but haven’t normally found offensive in this tea. (And, yes, I love actual carrot cake but I tend to pick out the nuts in my piece).

As soon as I opened the sample tin that LiberTEAs sent me I could smell a scent double of true Carrot Cake. HOW CLEVER! Then…when I looked at the Rooibos and other ingredients I could clearly see each element blended throughout the mix. Its very colorful and creative! This infuses pretty dark for a Rooibos. The first sip took me by surprise as it was mostly carrot taste…but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sips quickly followed and intrigued me and I kept drinking.

If broadway had a Tea/Tisane Musical with flashy colors, and music, and storyline, and costumes, and stage tricks – this would be it. It seems to be surprise after surprise and the end result is that is tastes like Carrot Cake in a Cup! It very much lives up to it’s description.

What a treat!

i keep drinking this one and i WANT to love it so much because it is the tea that was recommended to me and the reason i placed my Tea Guys order in the first place. and it has all these great elements that i should be enticed by. but for some reason it doesn’t excite me. OBVIOUSLY i need to drink it with milk and sugar next time, like a proper cake!

This tea took a while to grow on me.
(Before you start reading, I sweeten things a lot. Just know this about me)

This tea always will remind you of it’s namesake. It has that carrot cake-y taste to it. Unlike the bake-y flavor often noted on the black teas, this definitely has a cake-y taste. Like the aftertaste you’d have in your mouth after eating a bit of that yummy cake-y goodness. My initial problem was that I only added half as much sweetener as I normally would, and I kept thinking the tea was lacking. Then I realized what I thought was missing-the cream cheese frosting. It tasted exactly like the inside of the cake, but where was the frosting?? This is necessary people. What is Carrot Cake without the cream cheese frosting? It’s a pompous muffin. Feh.

So I did it again, and added my preferred amount of sweetener and then added milk to help with the cream cheese deficiency. Ah! There it is. This is right. Now this is a dessert tea I can get behind.

Husband prefers it without the milk. So, obviously, your mileage may vary.

This even got a decent re-steep (with a bit of a crutch), which I found impressive. I’ve never had good luck re-steeping rooibos.

I will enjoy the rest of this packet, but probably won’t order more. It’s a good tea. Very good tea, but maybe not my cup of tea.

Yum… I decided for my last cup of the night, that I’d have a “late night snack”! Carrot Cake!

It is remarkable to me just how much like Carrot Cake this tea really is. So yummy!

I had been wanting to try this one for so long! I finally bought a little sample of it and I’m quite happy that I did. Plain, this tea is a bit like spice cake with a hint of carrot. The spices are prominent and I do detect some carrot towards the end of the sip. After I’ve added a splash of milk, it turns into a more delicious dessert tea — creamy, cakey, carroty. There is a little bit of that sour finish that I found was present in the other Tea Guys rooibos/honeybush blend. This tea would be even more tasty without that sour note, but otherwise, it’s a very nice dessert blend. If I ever buy more, I’m definitely going to have it exclusively with milk. The added creaminess takes it to another level.

Thanks to Courtney (and Shmiracles!) for sharing this one! I am always looking for delicious rooibos blends to drink in the evening, and this sounded intriguing.

I always WANT to like carrot cake more than I do. This smelled almost exactly like carrot cake, so that was exciting. However, the medicinal rooibos flavor overpowers the carrot cake that I smell. I still enjoyed two steeps of this, though, so it’s definitely one of the better rooibos blends that I’ve tried.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there (including the “Moms” of pets as well)! My mother absolutely loved this Carrot Cake tea. She did her first “dance of tea joy” when she unwrapped it and read its name. Carrot Cake is her all-time favorite cake, but she has to limit sweets and caffeine for her health so this tea was a dream come true for her :D

I was impressed with how much like carrot cake this tea smells from the bag to the cup. I asked my mom what score she’d give this tea and she said without hesitation 100. But I think she’s a little biased because of several things in this situation: 1. it’s a gift, 2. the gift is from me, and 3. it’s carrot cakey. She also made a great comment about how with coffee she always wished that she had something sweet to go with it (whether it be a pastry or some flavored creamer). But with this tea she feels completely satisfied. Hooray!

Obviously I didn’t base my rating on my mother’s love of this tea. It just has a bit too much of the rooibos present for me to like. Plus, I’m not a carrot cake fan. I’d rather eat the frosting ;) I think overall if you’re a lover of carrot cakes then you should definitely try this tea. For me it was NE.

But wait! There’s more!

I finally followed through on my threat promise to create a flickr account in order to show off the pretty tea cozy that Doulton sent as part of the Shakespeare box. Here it is in all of its glory: http://tinyurl.com/2whsc2j I had a few other shots but I learned an important lesson about photography: if you have reading glasses, then you should wear them both while taking the photos and while editing the photos. ::facepalm:: So a lot of the pics were too blury to post.

But wait! There’s even more!

My mother surprised me with a “Kitty Mother’s Day” present. It was this figurine of an angel holding a teapot: http://tinyurl.com/35rttlu Here’s a closeup of the tiny teapot: http://tinyurl.com/2wfu2o7 Neither one of us are crazy about angels, but my maternal grandmother used to collect angels-playing-flutes figurines (she had been a professional flutist). I was able to select my favorite angel figurine that had belonged to her sometime after her passing. Therefore, it was particularly sweet to get a surprise present that had many levels of meaning for me. Hoorays!

Thanks to Shmiracles for this one!

This smells carrot cake spicy mixed with rooibos. Which, according to the description, is exactly what it should smell like. Fancy that.

Well it’s definitely one of the better rooibos teas I’ve tried but still there’s that medicinal taste. A sweetness is coming out as it cools. It doesn’t exactly taste like carrot cake but something is reminding me of carrot cake.

NICE! Upon opening the bag I kinda freaked. The SMELL. Amazing! …Every year for my birthday I’d ask for a carrot cake, my favorite since what must have been 1994? Due to dietary restrictions I haven’t had a baked “legit” carrot cake in forever. This totally hits the mark for satiating my cravings. I’m not traditionally a big fan of rooibos but I think in this blend I think it’s the perfect compliment. It’s sweet, slightly spicey, and can definitely detect the carrot (not overpowering, just about right). Some seriously epic ingenuity from the Tea Guys (this and other blends). I’ll be keeping some on hand. :)