Bluebird Tea Co. Advent Calendar — Day 24 — Christmas Cake tea bag

So the final window on the advent calendar has been opened and it’s another tea bag —  the extremely festive-sounding Christmas Cake.

Ingredients: Ceylon black tea, vanilla pieces, almond pieces, cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, spruce needles, snowflake sprinkles (sugar, rice flour, hardened peanut oil, potato starch, flavour, gum arabic (E414), potassium sorbate (E202), colours (E171)), flavour.

They describe it thus:

Holding its own for the title of best Christmas tea of all time, this blend tastes like cake, contains real life actual Christmas tree (spruce needles!) and, as if that wasn't enough, it has little candy snowflakes. Still not impressed? Well brew it up and watch it glitter like icicles! 

In the same way that I don’t like mince pies and Christmas pudding, I don’t like Christmas cake — not the fruit ones, anyway — I used to like the chocolate topping, the frosting and the marzipan fruit on a Tunis cake but not the actual cake itself as it was far too dry (do they still make those, I haven’t seen one for years?)

However, the ingredients in this are not only interesting (the Christmas tree, for instance) but fun and I’m looking forward to trying it — even if only for the glitter — I love a bit of glitter!

Unfortunately, it won’t be today as the most I can cope with is plain tap water thanks to my extremely sore throat, my temperature and the fact that I just feel like crap. Although I’d be able to see the glitter I wouldn’t be able to give it a proper review in this state — my excitement levels aren’t high right now, and don’t think I could taste a thing, even the Strepsils aren’t imparting much flavour.

I’m hoping that all this dosing myself up and, no doubt, more sleep at some point will mean that I’m feeling better tomorrow, in which case I’ll make it the first thing I drink.

I hope you’re all ready for Christmas and full of seasonal cheer. Have some more glitter.

UPDATE

Well, I have finally tried this tea! Better late than never.

Remember last week when I was waxing lyrical about the marvellous Winter Tea by Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. rather than drinking this tea as I should have done? Well, had I actually looked at the ingredients list for this tea I would have discovered that they share several similarities.

This tea isn’t anywhere near as strongly flavoured, which I suspect has something to do with the sugar sprinkles and vanilla which make for a sweeter-tasting, lighter brew, and the underlying tea flavour doesn’t come through as much either as it's from a different country, but other than that it is close in taste to Winter Tea with that wonderfully spicy, clovey flavour that I fell so in love with.    

I have to admit that I didn’t pick up on the pine needles or spot the glitter for that matter, but they certainly don’t detract from the flavour.

As this tea contains sugar sprinkles and vanilla I found I only needed 1 teaspoon of demerara — I could probably have drunk it without but to my mind a ‘cake’ tea should be sweet.

Overall, I thought this was a nice tea and a pleasant way to end the advent calendar, even if it did take nearly a month before I got to drink it.

Thanks Bluebird Tea Co. for producing the advent calendar, it’s been an interesting experience and I look forward to seeing what next year brings.

Oh, and I definitely will get round to trying the Matchas soon, I promise.

THIS WEEK

Talking of Matcha, Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. are offering some as a free gift until midnight on Sunday. You can also get 10% off across their range using the code MATCHA.