Tagged: gluten free
Tea and Cake # 5
A colleague from work brought me a box of gluten free macaroons from a recent trip to Italy that she made with her husband on a motorbike. We usually share sweets, biscuits, fruits and many cups of tea at work but these macaroons were a gift and also were so pretty that I said I was going to use them for a new edition of “tea and cake” on my blog. So another excuse to write, eat and drink tea!
These lovely purple little circular cakes are blueberry macaroons with blueberry cream filling. To pair them I made a Nilgiri SFTGFOP1 black tea so the sweetness and fruitiness of the macaroon could blend with the natural fruity character of the tea. The crumbly texture of the macaroon was also perfect to match the light-medium body of this black tea. In this case I think an iced tea could have been good as well but temperatures already started to drop so a warm cup of tea was a great choice.
I know it could sound silly but how easy it is to make yourself happy with little things: tea, macaroons and a book perhaps? Or just watching the clouds go by from the window, feeling the crisp air of the autumn? Tea and cake is a small but special pleasure if we intend it to be, isn’t it?
Thank you Txung for the present!
Tea and cake # 4
While in Antwerp I was doing some grocery shopping at the supermarket when I spotted this lovely box of gluten free Speculoos biscuits on the shelf. I would always see my husband craving for the regular ones so it was finally my opportunity to try them! If you don’t know what Speculoos is, these are shortbread biscuits with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, brown sugar, cardamom, among other spices, similar to a Christmas shortbread.
The box had this message on the side: “The little pleasures in life are a touch of oooom mixed with a pinch of mmmmm and a dash of yuhm, and many other special ingredients only you know about”. Well, these biscuits are mmmm, yuhmmm, oommm indeed and I think that would be the best description for it; my husband was right. Needless to say this brand is called Little Pleasures.
So in this edition of Tea and Cake (that I should have called Tea and Biscuits instead), I married a black, malty, full bodied Assam with the Speculoos biscuits and the combination was absolutely delicious! It was like tasting a Masala Chai and if you think about it, it actually is. The spices in both the tea and the biscuits are mostly the same. But don’t worry, if you don’t have Speculoos, find a good Assam or any robust black tea and accompany it with some ginger or spiced cookies, and you will see the result!
This time I also added soy milk to my Assam (a lighter version of a builders tea) just to add creaminess to it and have a bit of contrast with the crunchiness of the biscuits.
I had a sip of my tea, then I had a cookie, then another sip and so on until the cup and the box were both empty.
teascopia 