Ice Cream Cake

Dry Leaf Nose: Neapolitan ice cream

Liquor: Golden-brown colour, with a sweet ice cream aroma.

Flavour: Reminiscent of rich ice cream, with the tea playing a nice supporting role. Nice and sweet.

This is one of those blends that I’m a little frightened of. I mean there’s just so much STUFF in it! Sprinkles, freeze-dried ice cream bits, I didn’t know what to think. Sounds like too much going on, but it has decent reviews so I was pleased to get a sample from Nicole. I’ll try any tea once! Except for maybe that bug butt tea from a while back.

This… actually tastes like cake! I cold brewed it and was surprised to smell the delicious scent of baked goods wafting up at me. It doesn’t remind me of Della Terra’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake though, which is the cakiest blend I have tried. This one is more… cake in a box cake. Not that there’s anything wrong with cake from a box! It just doesn’t have that rich brown sugar butteriness I was hoping for.

I get why people read Neapolitan from this—I don’t get much in the way of chocolate, but there’s definitely vanilla and a hint of strawberry. Perhaps from the freeze dried ice cream? There’s also, um, stuff floating in my glass that I find a bit unnerving. Like when there’s a shaft of light and you see all the dust motes: first it’s pretty and then you have an “oh my god am I breathing that stuff?!” moment. I had that with this tea: there’s little “cake motes” from the sprinkles and whatnot that freaked me out for a minute there!

All in all a pretty unique and adventurous blend. Not something I’d reach for on a regular basis, but I was happy to try it! I guess now I have to hunt down the other DT cake teas and compare them…

I thought I’d get away from this one but last time I was in the store, the canister was sitting on the counter, twiddling its thumbs, waiting for me to smell it. I’m a sucker for flavoured blacks, so 10g it is.

To start, the dry leaf smells incredibly sweet. Creamy and sweet, but in a vague way. It doesn’t remind me of ice cream at all, just Diabetes.

I added a splash of milk and yeah, it tastes crazily sweet and creamy. Maaaybe it’s a little bit like vanilla ice cream, I can see that, but even more so, it’s like someone dumped a vat of icing on top of the ice cream, and I’m getting more of a, dare I say, toffee vanilla icing, but in a 95% pure sugar, 5% vanilla toffee way. Because it is so sugary sweet, it’s kind of bland. There’s nothing dynamic about it at all.

The tea scum leaves much to be desired too.

2nd note
I added some milk to this tonight but it actually took away from the flavour. I thought it would go perfectly with milk! It’s still nice and sweet and creamy but it’s bordering on too artificial this time, even for me. Oh well, it’s still a nice dessert tea. And it’s making me really tired so it was a good pre-bed choice. Yay for not being affected by caffeine… except that I can’t use it to my advantage to wake up in the morning/stay up late either .__.

Okay, I’ve had this several times now and haven’t logged it because I couldn’t really figure out what I thought about it. It’s just kind of weird. It’s not bad, and it accomplishes some sort of ice creamy taste, but it’s odd. I don’t care for the carob in it, nor do I care for the stevia!

Anyway, when I put my hand into the chaotic tea corner, I grabbed this one. I need to use up what I have, so I went with it. But I wanted to change it up, so I basically made breakfast out of it by adding the most coconut milk I have ever added to a tea (Aroy-D, in a carton, from an Asian market; it’s the way to go for coconut milk). I have mostly concluded that I don’t like my cherished coconut milk in tea because the fat floats to the top and gets weird. But, I used a lot. And I already think that the coconut milk tastes like ice cream when it gets really thick. So, the texture rocked. And it was sweet and creamy and tasty.

But, there was the WORST bitter aftertaste on it. Yuck. I definitely find that I like stevia in food but can’t handle it in beverages. I’m going to have to try a super-creamy coconut milk latte with another tea because it showed great potential and also kept me full for hours!

Big thanks to Janelle, I had enough for one cup of this. I waited for the perfect evening. The boy is sleeping, our brand new kitten (a terribly pathetic but adorable four week old rescue) has finally fallen asleep on my lap, my show is on, and I am enjoying this tea. God I love this tea! The base is so smooth and it is such a sweet sugar hit. I am so crushed it is not available anymore. I can admit to occasionally stalking DT online hoping in vain that it will come up on clearance.

This was a much enjoyed cup and, who knows one day I might get another. :)

My mom brought this home for me in the spring, and I must say, I’m extremely impressed! It smells almost too sweet at first, but it definitely mellows out. Being that it is ice creamy, milk works really well in this tea. I find I usually don’t have to add any sugar at all, it’s sweet enough on it’s own.

Sipdown (198)

That darn banana, bourbon, and vanilla bean jam is dangerous. It compliments so many tea smoothies perfectly and this one was no exception. It made for a delicious goodbye to a mediocre tea. Now I regret not grabbing the raspberry and star anise one that probably would have been a nice addition as well. I guess another trip to the jam store is in my future…or I can always mooch off my friend who picked that one up.

Thank you Amanda for this sample!

This smells really sweet right out of the bag. There’s a pretty mix of sprinkles and small pearls of what I’d guess is the freeze-dried ice cream.

3 tsp in 6 oz boiling water for about 3:35. The resulting liquid is halved – one for trying hot, the other over ice. Both versions look dirty. There’s sediment at the bottom that looks to be vanilla bean seeds and floaty stuff at the top, kind of looks like the top of lake water.

Brewed, the liquor still smells sweet. It tastes sweet as well. (I didn’t add sweetener to the cup.) This tastes similar to liquified ice cream with a vanilla bent.

The cold version is less tasty for some reason. I don’t think I over iced it, but I’m finding the flavor a little lost. I (shamefully) added more sugar to the iced version which helped it out in the flavor department. Will probably get this, but in a small size and especially for the winter.

Thanks again for sharing Amanda!

Colour: light brown
Smell: dry—amazing, brewed—still smells great
Taste: I think this tastes more like neopolitan ice cream than ice cream cake. Like others have mentioned, I am especially getting the strawberry ice cream taste from it. I don’t think I could drink this everyday, but nice for a sweet treat.

It does leave a scum on the cup though, and leaves lots of little particles in the bottom of the cup. That is a little off-putting.