My Tea Blending Experience: Chocolate Orange Cannoli Black Tea

It was back in July (a few weeks after I became Amoda Tea’s new Tea Curator) when Tegan told me that she would love to work something out with Anne of 52Teas to create custom blends for Amoda’s December box. Their December box is the most anticipated one of the year as it’s filled with festive, premium blends. Fortunately, we were able to work out a schedule with Anne so she could create, taste and blend 6 great holiday teas in small batches. I even worked closely with Anne to create a blend from one of my ideas! I have a lot more experience drinking blends than making them, so it was interesting to see more of the “behind-the-scenes” of 52Teas’ art!

52Teas is a mother-daughter company that is committed to releasing a new small batch, hand-crafted tea every week. Anne Downen is the “mad tea artist” behind these blends. When we worked out the details and schedule with Anne it was time to start thinking of flavours that can be associated with the holiday season. Anne had a bunch of ideas and left an opening for me to come up with one on my own.

I was excited that Anne left a tea for me to create. To the drawing board I went! I started thinking of things that reminded me of the holidays and realized quickly it was all food related haha. Panettone (sweet bread) and pizzelles (waffle cookies) are two Italian desserts that are usually found at my house during the holidays. However, there are Panetonne inspired tea blends out there already so that idea wasn’t unique enough. Also, pizzelles have a strong anise flavour, which isn’t always a favourite in tea blends, so a third Italian dessert came to mind. After a few ideas thrown around, Anne wanted to make my dreams of a cannoli tea blend come true.

What is a Cannoli?

A cannoli is a Sicilian dessert that consists of a fried pastry dough filled with a sweet, creamy filling that is traditionally made with ricotta and other flavourings. With many dessert inspired tea blends available, this is one I have not seen before and Anne was up for the challenge!

The Making of Chocolate Orange Cannoli Black Tea

I’m not a tea blender by any means and that really showed during this experience….

At the start we were discussing the flavours we wanted so Anne could get some ingredients for testing. She suggested chocolate and oranges and my one request was that we should really have something in the blend to replicate that crisp, pastry shell. Without that, it would just taste like a chocolate orange blend.

Not unique and not ideal.

But, how do we mimic a pastry shell taste in a tea blend?

My first thought was “maybe we just toss in broken pieces of cannoli shells….”. It would certainly look neat, but I don’t think it would do anything aside from giving us soggy pieces of bread (yuck!). I decided to not share that idea with Anne. I told her I didn’t know how it would be done and would leave it up to her. She is the mad tea artist, after all.

Anne agreed that we needed something for the pastry shell taste. So much so that she decided to scrap her original idea for the Chocolate Orange Cannoli blend and sourced different teas for the base. Her thought was that she could find a pure tea that already offers something similar on its own and play off that.

Genius, I thought. This is where appreciation for pure teas really comes in handy.

She tried a plethora of teas for this blend. From Assam black tea to a Gunpowder green tea, Anne updated me often on her tastings. At one point she tried to blend a Gunpowder green tea with an Imperial Yunnan black tea. Individually, both teas were remarkable but together, they were very drying and astringent. The Yunnan offered a bread-y profile on its own, however that flavour was lost in this blend. In the end, Anne nailed down the perfect blend of tippy Yunnan teas for an amazing Chocolate Orange Cannoli Black Tea.

The aroma reminds me of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, but once steeped for about 5 minutes, you really do get bread-like notes from the great quality tea. The tippy Yunnans really pulled this blend together. Cannoli are typically creamy with a ricotta filling, so I like to add a splash of milk to my cup to enhance the creaminess. I love that it’s a dessert blend that isn’t too sweet. I would most definitely enjoy a cup of this often!

Chocolate Orange Cannoli Black Tea Blend Ingredients

All organic ingredients: blend of Yunnan teas, cacao nibs and shells, oranges, allspice and natural flavours.

Order Chocolate Orange Cannoli Black Tea Here

What I Learned From Tea Blending

While Anne did the actual blending, I still learned a lot from this virtual experience. Tea blending can truly be a work of art. There’s more to it than just tossing some ingredients together and hoping it works out. You don’t need 50 different ingredients or artificial flavours in a blend. We were able to create a cannoli inspired blend with just five ingredients thanks to the premium teas used!

I think it really helps to have a deep appreciation and understanding for pure teas. Sometimes the most simple blends are truly the best because they play off of the actual tea’s characteristics.

Thank you Anne for making this idea of mine come to life and absolutely nailing it. This blend (and others from the December box Anne created) are limited edition. If you’d like to try them head to Amoda Tea to order before they’re gone!