Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Flowers and Tea... and Cake

Busy post today - lots to say (though none of it important, as usual).

First, tea:

Coconut Tea

The white bits? Coconut, baby!

This morning's tea was coconut tea. Yum! Not too strongly flavored, but a nice, subtle coconut flavor with a lovely smell and nice sweet aftertaste. Perfect with a touch of sugar but smooth enough to not need milk. Very nice! Not sure how it is iced yet but definitely hopeful!

This evening's tea is a lovely and unusual green tea.

Genmai Cha

Green tea with browned rice and popcorn

This tastes like Japanese osembe with a toasty but slightly sweet flavor. Still working on the best way to brew it (Adagio doesn't suggest brewing amounts of the loose tea which is frustrating but I'm hoping things will get easier when I get my scale that I just ordered from Amazon) but I'm quite liking it. It makes me want some edamame since both edamame and osembe are Japanese bar-style foods. So does that make this a bar tea?

In non-tea news, I made an angel food cake and this time it turned out much better than when I tried to make it in the bundt pan. My lovely MIL sent me a tube pan so it even looks like a normal angel food cake.



Okay, so it is a little crooked...

So woo hoo. And I didn't even ruin a pan like I did months ago.

And in other nifty news, the yard is starting to bloom! I've had a couple of white irises bloom and just this weekend, some of the dark purple ones popped out.


Pretty Irises

My yellow ones opened up yesterday (no pics yet) and my purple and whites are starting to open today. Soon the fancy ladies or whatever they are called - the light lilac, frilly ones, should be opening soon.

Oh, and the Lady Bank's rose is huge. I think it is plotting to eat the house.

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posted by Amanda at 8:35 PM 2 comments

2 Comments:

Anonymous Claudia said...

So glad no pans were harmed in the baking of that cake. That was Dan's Gama's pan, so you have another piece of her now. Your flowers are beautiful. We have a few mini-daffodils and a hyacinth, everything else is still a promise. The tea looks interesting, but what a bummer with no idea exactly how it is best to brew. Sounds like you guys are doing well with it. Love you lots, MIL

April 08, 2008 9:59 PM  
Blogger Amanda said...

Well, they give the temp and the time (though I tend to brew my greens a little shorter to keep them sweeter) but it doesn't say how much leaf to use. For black teas a tsp to 1.5 tsp is pretty normal, but there is such a variety in the amount for greens - every site says something different. So I've been using about 1.5 - 2 tsp. for my greens and it is seeming to come out okay, but from some things people have said, I might be doing it very light. But then the teas in Japan aren't made all that strongly so I think part of that is the American palate controlling the strength of the tea.

But honestly, as long as it is taste, it is okay if it is a little weak. I can always make the next batch stronger (though the genmai seems very forgiving - sencha a little less so. Definitely need more leaf with the sencha than the 1 tsp I did last time!)

And thanks again for the pan! I would send you a piece of cake so we can share my first decent angel food cake with you, but I don't think it would mail all that well...

April 08, 2008 11:09 PM  

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