Rachel's Custom Tea Blends

My local tea shop had a blending class for the holidays, and my awesome boyfriend actually bought me a spot in the blending class as an early Christmas/Chanukah gift. To thank him for such an awesome gift, I decided to make a tea specifically for him. I really REALLY wanted to make him a banana tea, but they only had so many flavors and add-ins, and I had to abandon that idea. But while blending and mixing teas, I came across another great idea. My boyfriend loves candied nuts, but they are not the healthiest thing around (plus they are pricey, yo). So I decided to make a tea blend out of it, instead. I also got to cup it along the way, which was nice, but after cupping teas 10 or 15 times, you get a little stick to your stomach. :-p

For this tea, I used white peony (white tea) as the base, added in some chrysanthemum to help give it some nutty taste, and I added cornflower petals to make it look pretty. We had a few flavoring oils we could apply, so I used an almond and caramel flavoring. The almond was nice, but the caramel really gave it that candy coating.

I unveiled the tea at Christmas yesterday and my boyfriend was so excited he had to brew it tonight. The tea has a very strong scent (maybe too strong), but when you brew it, it mellows out. It’s actually quite nice.

The tea master who taught the class thought that mixing such strong flavors with a white tea was a bad idea and I should have stuck to black or rooibos tea. But, whatevz. My boyfriend and I are not fans of black tea, and white tea can be pricey. Plus, white blends are fun. The white tea does take a back seat and you can’t really taste it, but that’s not such a bad thing.

All in all, it’s not bad for my very first tea blend with flavorings. I don’t know if I’m going to become a master tea blender anytime soon, but I think I did well.