Friday, March 21, 2014

Flavored Matcha - Red Leaf Tea Amaretto Matcha

I first tried a flavored matcha last week. Red Leaf Tea has a program where they give away 1,000 samples every month of a different one of their flavored matchas, you just pay shipping. It's a great idea and a great deal. March's flavor is cheesecake. So I tried it. I loved it. Of course, I just did this as an iced latte, but it's fun and tastes good.

After trying it, I went through their website imagining what other flavors would be delicious in milk with some ice. I created a whole wish list on their site. One of the ones I thought would be yummy would be their amaretto matcha. And wouldn't you know it was on sale a few days later?! Perfect! I placed an order for that and a few other teas. Luckily, they're pretty close to me geographically, so it showed up a couple of days later.

This morning, I decided was an amaretto matcha latte kind of morning. Boy, am I glad I did.

I turned on my electric kettle to heat up some water. It isn't necessary, but it makes things a lot easier with hot water, I've found.

I opened the pack of matcha and the sweet almond scent drifted up. Yum! (I picked the distinctive flavor, when I ordered, which is one step up from their standard delicate. I wanted to be able to taste the amaretto for sure.) I reached for my quarter teaspoon...and couldn't find it. I searched everywhere. (I have a feeling it was accidentally knocked to the floor and is now a new cat toy.)

Eventually, I gave up and used a long iced tea spoon which has a small, not deep at all, bowl to the spoon. Two lightly rounded scoops of the matcha went into the kitchen sifter sitting on the cup of my cocktail shaker. (Everything I've read on the internets says that sifting is important. I don't know for sure that it is, but it's an easy step to do.) To that, I added about 1/4 cup of the hot water that was ready by this point. I don't have a whisk that works well in the shaker, so I just used that same ice tea spoon and mixed the matcha and water into a thick, dark green liquid. I added a bunch of ice and topped with milk - 2% - maybe 12oz.

The top went on the shaker and I shook. Things got nice and frothy. The milk turned light green. Everything seemed happy. I gave it a few more good shakes just to be sure, and poured it into my glass. (I left the ice behind, but you could do this with or without ice.)

And then I tasted.

Delicious.

Nice and creamy (use good milk with some actual fat in it) with a slight tea taste, but mostly just almondy. It definitely tasted like amaretto. I felt like I was having a creamy cocktail and it was just breakfast time.

This made a very happy Cheri.

I offered a taste to my husband, but he declined. It was too many big words and it was green. He doesn't do green in the morning. (He did later agree that he would try it a different time, just not for breakfast.)

I should have taken pictures of this whole process, but I didn't think about it until it was just an empty glass. I'll try to do a better job next time.

1 comment:

  1. Nice blog! I always read your blogs. I had also read about Best Oolong Tea with its great recipes.

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