Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Soy Lecithin’

I’ve written about tea in one fashion or another for well over three years, but when confronted with tea chocolate I draw a blank. This marks the first time I’ve tried a tea-infused sweet other than green tea ice cream or mochi cakes. Thankfully, though, eating sweets is well within my area of expertise. Perhaps [looking down at gut] too much.

Tea and All Its Splendour is the brainchild of Raelene Gannon, one of only fifteen certified tea sommeliers in Canada. Certified how and through what? I couldn’t tell you. Point is, she is one, and that’s what her site says. Back in ’08, on a trip to China, she had an epiphany while ordering a cup of coffee and couldn’t even bring the cup to her lips. Switching to a jasmine-scented green tea, she found her thirst-quenching beverage of choice. The experience led her to pursue tea as a viable career.

Mustering her acumen in the chocolate and confection industry, she also developed the ‘ChocolateT’ line of gourmet bars. The idea of pairing tea and chocolate isn’t a new one, but this was the first time I’d come across a Belgian chocolate/tea pairings. Of the choices presented before me, I went with the safest bet ­ White Belgian Chocolate with Matcha and Sencha.

Ingredients included sugar (obviously), cocoa butter, full cream powder, soy lecithin, natural vanilla, and natural tea flavor. When I read the last one, I did a mental about-face. Tea flavoring? Isn’t that cheating? From the looks of the gourmet bar itself, it appeared actual matcha powder was used rather than a flavoring agent; so, why not just say that?  I could believe that sencha flavoring was used, though, unless it was an extracted powder. But that would’ve been redundant given the matcha powder inclusion. So many questions.

The gourmet bar itself looked like white chocolate that’d been paired with matcha ­ light green ringed by white on the periphery. There was an ornate, circular, vine-like design on the body of it, and the pieces easily divided into four smaller pieces like a good candy bar should. Not sure if this was the proper thing to do to chocolate, but I went up and took a whiff. It certainly smelled like chocolate, too. (Leave it to me to point out the obvious.)

To the taste, well, there really isn’t much I have to say. It held the flavor of white chocolate – quality stuff at that. Did I taste any matcha or sencha? Unfortunately, no. Perhaps my taste buds aren’t advanced enough to pick up on the nuances of tea-infused chocolate. I never said I was a choco-sommelier. Heck, I’m not a sommelier of any sort. I’m an amateur appreciator of tea (at best), and from my uneducated perspective, this was a damn good chocolate bar. And that’s about it.

You can purchase the Tea Infused Chocolates directly from the Tea and All Its Splendour website.

Some days–okay, some weeks—you just need chocolate. In copious amounts. And after multiples of those Reeses’ peanut-butter-cup-snarfing, Oreo-bingeing weeks, one finally reaches the conclusion that one must find a more healthful alternative. Tea Forte’s Hazelnut Truffle provides plenty of the cacao-based yum with much less of the calorie-borne guilt.

The individual ingredients are big, pretty, and very visible inside Tea Forte’s trademark triangular bag. Chocolate is the first and foremost aroma in dry-leaf stage, and chocolate stays the first and foremost aroma as it steeps. The light color may fool you–fully steeped, it stays golden brown instead of the shade of a Russell Stover all-dark assortment. But it’s big on nutty, chocolate flavor with a coconut chaser all the way down.

Hazelnut Truffle is sweet enough on its own; no milk or sugar necessary to make this a real treat, either for yourself or (great gift idea) for your chocolate-loving sweet-tea.

You can purchase the Hazelnut Truffle directly from the Tea Forte website.

It’s rare for me to have bagged teas but this is Celestial Seasonings so I’m open to it. When I was small, this is the only tea that we had in the house so it makes me feel a bit nostalgic. It says it’s a blend of green tea, Bai Mu Dan and ginseng root, with honey and lemon. It smells like a Chinese green tea, can’t smell anything else. Opened a bag and I can see small white bits that I’m guessing are ginseng, the rest just looks like green tea but I trust that there must be white tea in there as well. The ingredients list says it also contains licorice, chicory, ginger and orange blossoms, but I seriously can only smell the green tea.

Steeped for two minutes in hot (not boiling) water and now I can smell the lemon verbana and the spices. Brews up a light green with a hint of orange, not a clean brew but it’s not bad. It’s actually quite tasty, though slightly bitter, need to reduce the water temperature I think. Next time I’m going to try the cooler water and see if it steeps up better. Then I’m going to chill it and see if that will pull the flavors out better.

It’s okay, I mean it is what it is and it’s not terrible for what it is.

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.