I found these Green Tea Flavored Crispy Rolls from Thailand in one of Stockholm’s asian markets and of course I was tempted to try. Having a generally bad experience with tea flavored products, I prepared for the worst.

These rolls have a vibrant yellow-green color and they are indeed crispy. When it comes to flavor they are very very milky, most likely due to the 50% coconut milk content and the taste is comparable to drinking a sweet matcha latte. Except for the coconut milk, crispy rolls also contain 20% tapioca flour, 15% brown sugar, 9% green tea plus egg and salt – all the good stuff.

By the 5th roll into my exciting venture I started becoming more comfortable with the new, unfamiliar taste and I can say that right then they were not bad at all. Unfortunately, every time I got back to them after a break, they were strange to me anew. To be completely honest, I don’t think I’d buy these again, and stick to the good old green tea chewy candies.

Strong, warming aromas, sweet scents create a peculiar atmosphere in the air, Christmas Teas have indeed gained a solid position in the world of tea blends, with their distinguished character and a set of common ingredients. Today, Holiday blends are offered by many vendors and they make a great substitute for alcoholic beverages.

Christmas Teas can be easily recognized by a spicy aroma, often a mix of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves and a citrus touch of orange or lemon peels. However, nowadays vendors are more keen on moving away from these traditional ingredients, and choose a more contemporary style to create unusual flavors that will still remind us of the Christmas spirit. Dammann Freres has a Christmas series which offers some exciting and innovative flavors using such ingredients as cherry blossoms, pineapple, caramel and ginger.

Other interesting offerings are Taylors of Harrogate  Spiced CHristmas Tea which is a blend of black Chinese teas with lemon and grange peels, cinnamon and safflower petals or Apsara Winter Tea – a black tea with raisins, apple pieces, red currants, safflower petals and cloves. One thing is for sure, the options are countless and finding a favorite shouldn’t be hard.

Unlike with Indian Chai Tea, Christmas Teas should be generally enjoyed without milk, but a spoon of honey could be a great addition to enhance the flavor and add some sweetness.

Other suggestions

Stash Tea White Christmas – white tea with peppermint and ginger

Stash Tea Christmas Morning – blend of First Flish Darjeeling, Assam, Keemun and Yunnan, Formosa Oolong and southern Indian teas, with addition of jasmine

Stash Tea Christmas Eve – herbal tea with hibiscus, orange peel, rosehips, lemongrass, peppermint, star anise, ginger and cinnamon

Adagio Christmas Tea – black Ceylon tea with cinnamon, cloves and orange peel

Mariage Freres Noel Teas – a fancy selection of white, black, red and green teas

Kusmi Christmas Tea – Chinese black tea with orange, almond, vanilla and spices

Kusmi Green Christmas Tea – green tea with orange, almond, vanilla and spices

This month the following teas were reviewed in the Tea Colleciton

• Haas & Haas Wien Mozart Tea
• Haas & Haas Wien Hexenmischung
• Ahmad Blackcurrant Black Tea

Here is a video of how to make matcha ice cream. Just follow the instructions given by a dog and you’ll be on your way to creating a new, unique type of dessert. Watching this really makes me feel awkward, at the same time it’s kind of funny, but in the end nothing coming from Japan can surprise me anymore.

A young teenager died this summer in Keller, Texas, apparently from poppy tea. Poppy pods and seeds are widely available in e.g grocery stores and now there is a warning that bewing them into a tea might cause a morphine intoxication and even death. The police, after finding a strange bottle with tea and poppy seeds, suspects that the teenager used the tea to get high.

There is a lesson to be learned – kids, not everything you brew is good for you.

When I saw this, I though “Wow! This must be one of the coolest tea sets I’ve seen thus far!” My first impression of the Dione Tea Set was that it’s something taken out of a dodgy lab, where a crazy scientist prepares his afternoon tea in-between experiments. It looks like a clash between the antique and the futuristic, as if stylized for a movie set in a completely different, fictional reality (like something out of Franklyn). Designed by Vuk Dragovic, this set features two spheric teacups and a pot. Each tea cup consists of two hemispheres separated by a net, that prevents the leaves from entering the hemisphere that you will drink from. Sounds complicated? Well… it is. Here is how to use it.

The teacup is made up of two hemispheres. Between the hemispheres is a thin net which prevents the tea leaves from entering the cup. While the aroma from the tea leaves is mixed with hot water, the cup is covered with the top hemisphere, preventing the aroma from evaporating into the air. After 3 minutes, when the tea leaves have released their flavor, the tea cup is ready to be flipped 180 degrees and the leaves will be separated from the tea.

With this set-up you can prepare the tea in the cups, just for yourself, or in the pot for more people. Dione will requite you to make quite a ritual of your tea-making routine, but it surely does leave quite an impression.

Tea4Two is an electric kettle concept that allows you to prepare tea on-the-go. This portable device comes with two magnetic snap-up cups of different shapes and it features a retractable electric cord. The kettle itself is made from flush form and insulated ceramic polymer and it can serve as a thermos.

The whole idea seems quite interesting at first glance and the design is very clean and appealing, but the only problem is that on-the-go you usually don’t have electric outlets. How often do you go into a store/office/restaurant asking “Hey! can I use your outlet?”. You can of course boil the water at home and carry it with you in the kettle, but then again there are many other thermos options available today that offer better solutions. There is one thing I can think of this design would be very suitable for – people who live on-the-go, like for example students, people who move around a lot. If I was a student I would love to have this as my private kettle – small, portable, easy to use and with good looks.

Matcha is a very popular tea from Japan, used during the Japanese Tea Ceremony, but also for casual drinking. This tea is a vivid green powder made from ground tea leaves of tencha tea. Tencha is a shaded tea – meaning it was covered from the sun during a period of time in its growth, resulting in a deeper shade of green and a greater production of amino acids that gives the tea a sweeter flavor. The leaves are laid out flat to dry and then ground, creating a green powder known as matcha. However if the shaded leaves are rolled after harvest they are known as gyokuro tea.

Matcha is made of young leaves – primarly delicate buds, but it comes in different grades and some matchas can be very expensive, while others quite affordable. Generally matcha is classified into two main categories – usucha and koicha.

Usucha

Usucha is also known as ‘thin’ tea, because it is more bitter and during the tea ceremony more water is used to prepare it. This does not mean that it’s milder, in fact, Usucha usually has a stronger flavor then Koicha. This matcha is made of tea leaves from plants that are 30 years old of less and it’s a more common variety.

Koicha

Koicha is also known as ‘thick’ tea, because it’s flavor is much sweeter then usucha’s and less water is used for brewing. You also use more powder to make a bowl of this matcha. The leaves used for koicha come from tea trees that are 30 years or older. Koicha is the finer variety, therefore also more expensive.

Genmai Mtahca, in other words powdered Genmaicha with Matcha in a shaker bottle is an invention of Shizuoka Tea. The content of the powder is graound sencha leaves, roasted rice and matcha and it can be used to prepare hot and cold drinks, but also for baking, as a topping or desert ingredient. This could be revolutionary for true Genmaicha fanatics, as it will add that ‘popcorn tea’ feel to anything you will used it for. The shaker holds 30 grams (1.1 ounces) of powder, which yields in approx. 30 100ml servings.

So, the T-Man is a gadget designed by Jeewon Jung. It’s tea infuser that desperately hangs onto the edges of your cup, while your tea is brewing. By completely ignoring the practical aspects, I think we can say that T-Man is an innovative breath of fresh air and appreciate the wonders of modern design.