Bloom Teas – Banana Rice Pudding
Banana Rice Pudding tea is a rooibos-based blend, that also contains coconut, rice, bananas and natural flavourings. Its name evokes memories of the milky sugary puddings of my youth.
It’s funny how rice pudding used to be a major part of my life and now doesn’t feature at all. This is down to growing up in the 1970s and 80s before fruity yogurt pots were as ubiquitous as they are today and when pudding was considered a mandatory part of a weekday dinner. My childhood was full of such wonderful weekday desserts, like Angel Delight, sliced bananas with custard, and tinned fruit salad with evaporated milk. And, of course, rice pudding. (There was also semolina which had a similar energy. Both were served with a dollop of red jam but rice pudding was definitely nicer.)
Yet now I can go from one year to the next without a single thought about rice pudding. If you’re expecting me to say that Bloom Teas’ Banana Rice Pudding bought all those childhood memories back in a Proustian rush then I’m sorry to disappoint. Banana Rice Pudding tea is a very nice beverage but it doesn’t actually taste like a bowl of rice pudding. In fact, if anything, it tastes like the sliced bananas and custard I mentioned earlier.
I tried this tea both with and without milk. (Well, soy-based faux-milk-product but I shall continue to refer to it as ‘milk’ in these reviews, except in situations where its vegan-ness seems particularly pertinent.)
Milkless, this tea has a decided genmaicha vibe. This is to be expected. One of the primary ingredients here is what Bloom refer to as ‘roasted popcorn rice’ and proper Genmaicha (also known as popcorn tea) is a green tea and rice combo, which I have enthusiastically reviewed here before. I’ve never had a Genmaicha rooibos before and I felt entirely satisfied by the experience.
However, I’ve discovered that if you add milk to Banana Rice Pudding tea then the rice shuts up entirely and pretends it isn’t there. So I was left with a rather nice, creamy, vanilla-y banana-y blend which – as I mentioned before – reminded me of bananas and custard.
They were two totally different experiences, and both of them were rather tasty. I won’t be rushing to replenish this tea, though. There are plenty of other pudding-y rooiboses out there that do the job better but it was nice enough. An enjoyable experience, combining rooibos, toasted rice, banana and a happy little jaunt into the puddings of the last century. God, I’m old.
Today’s featured book is Mr Loverman by Bernadine Everisto.
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