aLightningbug

Tea for Tuesday (should I make that Tea for Twos-day?)

Caramel Almond Amaretti Herbal Tea from Teavana: a mini tea review

If you like cookies, coffee cake, nuts and sweets but don’t want all the calories that go along with eating those yummy things then this might be a good tea for you (and me too). 

Right now I’m pretty tempted to scarf down several more pieces of Halloween candy. There’s a pumpkin filled with candy sitting about eight feet from my mouth. I am trying to be good. I made a cup of tea instead.

Caramel Almond Amaretti may help satisfy the urge to indulge in sweets or baked goods without actually indulging in any sweet baked goods. This ability was my favorite thing about Teavana’s Toasted Nut Brûlée tea which has been discontinued. Caramel Almond Amaretti tastes somewhat like coffee cake to me. 

Unsweetened, Caramel Almond Amaretti has a light nutty fruity taste. I don’t find the taste to be especially of almonds, maybe some candied almonds with an overall nuttiness. 

The color is beautiful! It’s a light red blush. Natural beet root gives it this color. I steeped for about five minutes in good hot water.

The flavor seems a little watered down before adding any sweetener. But adding a little something sweet really kicks up the flavor. It brings out the caramel taste and enhances the sweet nut, cinnamon, and fruit flavors. The good side is that you can add as much or little of any sweetener you like — real raw sugar, honey, stevia, sucralose, agave nectar or others. 

I added a couple of drops of a liquid stevia and monk fruit blend. It did the trick and I didn’t eat any more Halloween candy (for now)!

Teavana’s Caramel Almond Amaretti contains:

Apple pieces, cinnamon, coconut chips, beetroot pieces, and artificial flavoring.

So there is a down side. You may notice that there are no nuts except coconut listed in the ingredients. And no caramel either. That’s where the artificial flavoring comes in. 

I’ve suspected the coconut chips of containing other flavors before in Teavana. In another Teavana tea they tasted like citrus. 

Taste a fresh dry coconut chip from this tea. Notice that those coconut pieces do not have much coconut flavor instead they taste strongly of nuts and some caramel. If you hate the idea of artificial flavoring this may be a big turn off for you. If you’re on the fence, you may not mind. The flavor is pretty good. 

One more downside, I only get one cup of good flavor out of this tea. I can get an okay second cup, but it tastes different. After that it just tastes like beets. While the cost of $7.98 per 2 ounces makes it one of the less expensive teas from Teavana,  it’s still on the pricy side. I’ll drink it as a dessert tea rather than a daily brew.

To some it up, I was looking for a possible replacement for the discontinued Toasted Nut Brûlée from Teavana. Caramel Almond smelled like a good candidate. Dry it smells like cake. Toasted Nut Brûlée reminded me a lot of an oatmeal cookie with cinnamon and raisins. There were several teas that I thought were worth trying based on ingredients. This is the closest so far, though it lacks some of the raisin flavor in Toasted Nut Brûlée. But it does help me satisfy a sweet tooth and that’s a big win in my book.

[Edited on 7-4-15 to add info on price and clarity]

I think I’m going to try to have a new tea review each Tuesday in November for Tea for Tuesday. I’ll try to post them earlier in the day than this one (it’s now 11:28 as I finish this up). The is also a post for my Day 3 of NaBloPoMo.