Welcome to teatime, teaple! I hope you don’t mind that today the kettle is infusing some delectable drinking chocolates, because this cold weather has just had me in the mood for some nice hot cocoa, and many of my favorite tea sites have some amazing cocoas in their tisanes up for offer! While I do have some more traditional chocolatey teas in my tea collection, today the cocoa peel, shells, nibs, and flavorings are going to be pushed aside for good ol’ straight up cocoa powder, infused in water and milk for rich, hot chocolately goodness! Ah yeah.
Last week the tea from Nil Organic Tea was a bit disappointing, so let’s see if this week’s offering, Chocolate Dipped Berry, will manage to be more impressive. This is another tea I picked up last March at the Portland Saturday Market during a vacation; the name alone got me. Chocolate Dipped Berry. It just sounded so delectable! The tea is made out of all organic ingredients, and there are two versions of the blend; an herbal version and a tea version using pu-erh leaf. When asked which blend I would like by the kind lady at the market stall, I opted for the herbal blend, because I wanted something sweet I could drink in the evenings before bed. Without the tea leaf, the tisane version is much like a fancy, flavored drinking chocolate! Nil Organic Tea describes the blend as “succulent berries, vibrant hibiscus, and rich raw cacao magically combine to give you a ride into chocolatey bliss.” The tea is sold in 3 oz. zip-top bags.
The caffeine-free tisane version of this blend includes organic cacao nibs, organic cacao powder, organic hibiscus, organic cranberries, organic goji berries, and organic flavor. The leaf is dusted in a thick layer of cocoa powder, so if you are curious what the ingredients look like before being coated in chocolate, take a look at the photos on Nil Organic Tea’s website. When I grabbed this tea pouch out of my cupboard, at first I thought that it had dried up and gone bad, because it looked crunchy or chunky… until I realized it was bits of nibs and leaves covered in chocolate powder, and not dried-up clumps of chocolate powder! It’s actually a very full, leafy tea, just thoroughly dusted! And it has a very appealing scent! It’s like a sweet aroma of dark red berries, and lots of chocolate! I can’t help but think of chocolate-covered strawberries or strawberries dipped in Nutella when I dip my nose into the bag and breath in the scent of the tea!
Nil Organic Tea recommends two teaspoons of tea steeped in boiling water for five minutes. I decided to go with these parameters, and find it interesting to see the bits of hibiscus and goji suddenly unveiled as the cocoa infuses into the hot water!
The resulting steep was quite interesting. It was a dark maroon/burgundy, as the colors of the hibiscus and the cocoa had fused into a most interesting shade! The resulting cup was quite thick, and had a very strong chocolate-berry scent as well!
The flavor, however, was just too tart! I think, for a straight infusion, the recommended two teaspoons of tea may have been a bit much, as the flavor was very strong! I can’t exactly say that it was unpleasant, but then, my palate tends to take tart flavors fairly well… but I couldn’t exactly recommend this sort of tartness to others, either. It reminded me of those speciality South American dark chocolates that have a really rich, strong bite to them, that tend to be a bit on the bitter or tart side, and have natural fruity flavor notes… has anyone ever tried those chocolates? I happen to love chocolates like that, but they tend to be a “love ’em or hate ’em” sort of thing.
Nil Organic Tea did recommend to “sweeten to taste” and “add your favorite milk to make this dreamy dessert even more creamy,” and the infusion actually tasted a bit too strong, as if it was designed specifically for lattes rather than a straight cup, so I decided to do just that, and added some warm chocolate almond milk, which would sweeten the brew a bit and add some creaminess all in one go.
The chocolate milk is exactly what this tea needed! Oh my goodness, suddenly this overly-tart tea tastes like rich, chocolate-covered cherries, or cherry cordials! It is just the right amount of sweet, with a fruity bite, and creamy, creamy chocolate! If you’ve ever wanted a hot chocolate that tastes like chocolate-covered cherries without a fake syrupy flavor, or a medicinal cherry taste, or a sicky sweet flavor, this tea is an excellent option! You might have to play around a little with the amount of leaf, sweetener, and milk that is just right for you to hit your “flavor sweet spot,” but when you find it, it’s a really magical thing. I’m still having a hard time processing that I’m not eating chocolate-covered cherries. Hold on. I think I need to make another cup…
(For the record, I did make another cup! For science, you know. If you want more of a tea experience, rather than a more creamy, latte experience, I was right — use one teaspoon of leaf rather than the recommended two! The flavor profile doesn’t have that overbearing tartness that you get with two teaspoons of leaf, which seems to be to get the flavor to shine through when adding milk. Instead the flavor profile is much similar to the flavor of drinking it latte-style, only not quite as sweet and far less creamy. Still tasty, but I think latte-style is my preference for this one!)
My next tea is one with some fond memories, which was also picked up during my birthday trip to Portland last year. It comes from Tea Chai Te, and if you checked out my 2017 reflections, it was my favorite tea shop I visited last year. It had a very quaint atmosphere, cozy dark lighting (great for a chronic migraineur like me… I felt right at home!), excellent teas, and most importantly, fantastic hours! (I don’t know how many times Todd and I have been unable to visit a tea shop on vacation because they all close so painfully early!) We ended up visiting multiple times and sharing many pots of tea during our trip. Their custom chai blends are particularly notable, and this particular chai was the first pot of tea we shared on our first visit to their shop, Rainforest Chai!
They sell their tea by-the-ounce (even online!), which is extremely convenient! (I’ve gotten to the point in my tea collecting where I simply won’t do business with a tea vendor if they only sell in 4 oz. sizes or larger… I just don’t have that kind of space in my tiny apartment, and can’t go through that much of a single tea by myself as a variety-style drinker!) So if you want to just buy a small amount to try a tea out (or to stash a little when you have a limited amount of space!) you can! Or if you want to stock up in bulk, you can! I honestly wish all tea vendors would take this approach, it is so nice for the consumer to be able to pick the amount of tea that suits their needs!
This is a caffeine-free herbal chai blend that uses mostly organic ingredients. The base of the tea is Guittard chocolate powder (mmmm, Guittard!), and the chai spices in the blend include ramon nut, cardamom, ginger, clove, and black pepper. Like the Chocolate Dipped Berry above, the tea ingredients are thoroughly coated in the cocoa powder, but I dusted off a few cardamom pods and pieces of ginger so you can get an idea of the size of the chai spices in the blend!
To me this tea smells like spicy Mexican hot chocolate. It has a very spicy scent, with pepper and ginger tickling the nose! The chocolate coating may make it seem unassuming, but there is no mistaking that this is still a very potent chai!
The only recommendations provided with this tea was to steep for six minutes, so I defaulted to my typical parameters for chai teas: I used a heaping teaspoon of leaf, boiling water, and went ahead and steeped for the suggested six minutes (without any tea leaf in this chai, the slightly longer steeping time was mainly to make sure that chocolate powder got nice and melted!)
Taken plain, this chai steeps a very dark color, which looks like dark chocolate in a cup! If taken as a straight tea, it is quite spicy — cocoa with no sweetener has a very dark, bittersweet bite (ever eaten straight baking chocolate?) and the spices add an extra spicy bite in the aftertaste. This is the sort of chai that is meant to be taken with sugar and milk, like very spicy chais made with strong black teas. Uh… unless you are into an extra bitter, extra spicy cup! (Which I am not!)
I like to use just a little chocolate almond milk, since then I don’t have to fuss with finding just the right amount of sweetener and milk — the milk is already sweet, so it kind of takes care of both in one go (some might call it laziness, I like to call it being efficient!) For this chai, I didn’t even need much; I frothed up some chocolate almond milk, and just added a bit to my cup (I had a ratio of about 3/4 tea to 1/4 milk). I still wanted to have a “spicy cocoa” flavor and didn’t want to change the flavor profile, so I just wanted to add enough milk to make the blend nice and creamy, balance out the spices, and sweeten out the cocoa.
And if you like hot chocolate with just a little bit of a kick, this tea is absolutely fantastic! It has a very nice chocolately flavor, but the spices provide just a bit of heat on the back of the tongue right in the finish. There is a faint peppery note on the tip of the tongue and some cardamom notes, but the dominant flavor for me is a hot gingery flavor, which oddly compliments the chocolate well. The nice thing about this tea is depending on your tastes, there is a lot of versatility with brewing: if you are one of those people that can’t get enough of spicy foods and order your Thai with extra stars, you could easily add some extra leaf to your infusion and go lighter on the milk and sugar (I would still recommend adding at least a bit of sweetener for the chocolate!) to get an extra spicy kick, and if you are like me and a complete spice-wuss and always order your Thai with no stars at all, you can always add a bit more milk and sugar until it feels just right. If you don’t like ginger, however, I’d probably recommend giving this one a pass; the ginger is quite easy to taste and is what really gives it that “spicy choco kick.”
Finally, it’s time to try a trio of drinking chocolate samplers that arrived just in time from Etsy seller Albion Tea Company! They also have a website located here. Albion Tea Company is an Etsy seller that creates unique, original tea blends and drinking chocolates from their own recipes out of all organic ingredients, sans flavorings or additives. And, just to tickle my librarian itch even more, they are all literary-themed! Currently there are collections based around Outlander, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, and Sherlock.
This seller was great! They offer Build Your Own Sampler sets for their teas and drinking chocolates, and knowing this review was coming up, I was very interested in trying out their drinking chocolates! But the chocolate I was most interested in from their listings wasn’t offered as an option on the Drinking Chocolate Sampler listing, so I messaged the seller asking if a substitution would be possible. I was told that chocolate was being pulled from their listings because they are working on a new Regency collection and it is going to be moved there when the collection is ready, but she would be happy to make it and include it for me! This really made my day! The speed that the blends were created and shipped out was very quick, and just look at the love and care that everything was packed into the box! If you know a book lover that enjoys tea, please do check out this Etsy seller. They have Harry Potter House teas, so I already know where I’ll be getting my blends this fall for Year Two of the Harry Potter House Cup… of Tea!
The three drinking chocolate samplers that came in this set are Chai, You Fools! from the Epic Quest (Lord of the Rings) Collection, Wintry Woods Mint Cacao from the Through the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) Collection, and Lavender Drinking Chocolate (which is currently unavailable; it used to be part of the Highland Collection, but apparently will be making a comeback in a future Regency Collection).
While I really am curious about that lavender cocoa I requested, since I just sampled a chai, I really wanted to try the chai so I could compare the differences in the flavors! Since Chai, You Fools! is a drinking chocolate rather than a tea-covered-in-cocoa-powder, it is very fine and looks no different than a hot chocolate mix. However, sniffing the chocolate you can smell the rich chai spices! From the aroma I can get some ginger and clove notes… it’s a bit peppery and tickles the back of the nose! This drinking chocolate includes raw cocao, coconut sugar, cinnamon, cardomom, ginger, black pepper, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.
The instructions say to use a tablespoon of the chocolate in one cup of milk (or milk substitute, I’d assume… we all know I like my almond milk, not because I have a problem with lactose, but just because I prefer the taste!) Warm the milk in a saucepan and whisk in the chocolate. Since I have a milk frother that actually warms the milk as it froths that I use to whisk matcha (because I am lacking proper matcha equipment), I thought I would give that a go, and if it didn’t mix the cocoa properly, then I’d go ahead and pull out a pan and do it the stovetop way. (It’s not being lazy, just efficient! Or that’s what I like to tell myself…) Mine has two attachments, a small plastic mixing piece that spins, and the whisking coil that fits on over the plastic mixing piece to froth up the milk, and if you happen to have a milk frother similar to this and want to do a full cup of milk for your cocoa, make sure you remove the whisking coil from the plastic mixing attachment. I may or may not have accidentally forgotten to do that since the last cuppa tea I made, and had a mess all over my counter from the physics of almond milk expansion, but I’ll leave that outcome to your imagination. *wink*
The good news is the Epica Milk Frother does indeed heat and mix drinking chocolate like a champ! (You know, when you make sure you don’t leave the whisking attachment on *cough cough*) The cocoa was very thoroughly mixed and the cup was very smooth! The taste was fantastic! This is a much sweeter chai than the flavor profile of Rainforest Chai, so if you like a little spiciness but prefer an overall sweeter cup of cocoa, this is probably a much better cup of chai for you! The chocolate is already sweetened so the spices already have a very rounded, balanced flavor. I get a little gingery heat at the back of the tongue, but nothing like the Rainforest Chai! The finish is more of a cinnamony, nutmeg flavor. There is a slight spicy kick to the chocolate, but it’s balanced with a lot of sweetness.
If you are a fan of spicy Mexican hot chocolates, I’d recommend giving a chai spice drinking chocolate a try! The Rainforest Chai is for the folks that like to take their foods with a lot of heat or for ginger lovers, and Chai, You Fools! is the better choice for a typical drinker for its overall sweeter profile and more balanced spice blend.
There isn’t anything that visually sets apart the following drinking chocolates from Chai, You Fools!, so I’ll be reviewing them sans visuals. The next drinking chocolate I sampled was Wintry Woods. The scent of this drinking chocolate is very mint chocolately! The aroma reminds me of those little Andes Mints candies! The ingredients in this drinking chocolate are raw cacao, coconut sugar, and ground mint leaves. I’m very curious how this will compare to the Candy Cane tea I reviewed recently, which I preferred to drink latte-style using hot chocolate almond milk.
This drinking chocolate is a very sweet hot chocolate with a hint of a cool minty taste that hits the back of the tongue right in the finish! I prefer this to the Candy Cane tea lattes, hands down! The artificial peppermint flavor in that tea, combined with the mint leaves and crushed candy cane candies was so heavy that drinking it with some hot chocolate milk was merely a way to try to cut back on the minty flavor some, but the strength of all that mint was still enough to leave a lot of flavor shining through the whisked chocolate milk. This is actually how I like my peppermint… not so overbearing! Without all the added flavoring, I can taste the mint, but it isn’t dominating the cup. The sweet chocolate notes come to the forefront, and then there is this little burst of cooling mint that closes out the sip. It’s very creamy and delicious! This is a great hot cocoa for chocolate-mint lovers!
Finally, the Lavender drinking chocolate! This drinking chocolate smells like cocoa and lavender flowers… mmm! This may seem like a strange choice, but I’ve been on this huge lavender kick lately (pretty much every tea order I’ve made lately I’ve had a lavender blend included, and my fridge is filled with lavender ice cream!) so I am so excited to try this! Thanks so much to Albion Tea Co. for letting me sample this even though this blend is currently unavailable! This drinking chocolate is made from raw cocao, coconut sugar, and ground lavender buds.
The instructions are the same, though suggest adding a splash of maple syrup for added sweetness as needed. As far as I’m concerned, that is completely unnecessary, because this drinking chocolate is amazing! It’s light, frothy, creamy, smooth, sweet, chocolately, and has a delicious lavender flavor note. I see lavender get paired with lemon (mmm) and chamomile (meh) often, but as far as I’m concerned, chocolate is its long lost love; that lightly floral, somewhat minty taste just works so well in a cup of hot chocolate. If you aren’t really a fan of floral teas or lavender in particular this might come as an odd pairing to your palate, but to the adventurous drinker, you should definitely try it! And if you like floral teas or lavender, this is a relaxing, decadent treat. I’ve admitted that I’m a huge fan of lavender, and my tastebuds have just been craving it lately, and while I’ve enjoyed all the chocolate teas and drinking chocolates I’ve tried this week, this is by far my favorite! I can’t wait for that Regency Collection so I can get some more!
There were additional directions on the packet for making the Lavender drinking chocolate iced, and I figured, why not? I’m sure any of these would be good as an iced drink, so it was worth trying out (for tea SCIENCE! Inquiring minds have to know!) The iced chocolate directions advised to whisk a tablespoon of drinking chocolate into two tablespoons of hot water in a glass measuring cup, then to fill measuring cup to the one cup mark with your milk of choice. Blend in a blender with ice or serve over ice cubes.
This is actually very close to what I do when I’m making matcha lattes; I’ll put the matcha with a bit of hot water into my milk frother and run it on the “cold” setting just to thoroughly mix and whisk up the matcha powder into the water, move it to a cup, and then froth up the milk in the frother next and add it to the mug. So I figured I’d do something similar to melt and whisk up my drinking chocolate in some boiling water, then just add the milk up to the cup line in the frother and mix it again on the cold setting, pop it in the fridge to cool it down, and serve it over my whisky rocks to keep it cold while drinking (I prefer not to use ice just so it won’t melt and dilute my drink).
It was very tasty, like a rich, lavender-flavored chocolate milk! I think in the summer icing the drinking chocolates, or blending them into smoothies will be very refreshing! Right now, during the cold winter months, though, a nice, hot cup of cocoa just hits the spot!
Thanks for joining teatime this week! Next week I’ll be checking out some healthful herbals, as it always seems that late into the winter season, right as spring is getting so close around the corner, is when colds and flus seem to strike me the hardest, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one! So if you are interested in teas that can help with a sore throat or upset tummy, be sure to drop by next week! Have a good one!
Teatime Tuesday Reviews 