Houjicha Latte

You know how I was mentioning about my addiction to Houjicha in my previous post? Well after writing about it, I decided to YouTube recipe for Houjicha, and was inspired enough to make my very first Houjicha Latte at home! I will leave some of YouTube clip in my reference section below. After drinking it, I was inspired enough to start taking photos and decided to post a tea entry here in this blog. So above photo shows my tea canister. The dark blue tin is actually from Tokyo Disneyland, and I use it to store my raw tea: tea bags SGD2 from Daiso, tea scooping plastic spoon (note to self: I should get a wooden one). Currently I have two type of tea inside the can: one is Genmaicha which my ex-colleague got me from Hong Kong. They originate from Kyoto actually, but it is good to know you can buy them from Hong Kong cause guess what, I'm headed to Hong Kong next year end! Woohoo! The other tea is Houjicha which I got from Hokkaido if I am not mistaken. Thankfully for it, I can now make my own Houjicha latte at home!

I remember when was the first time i fell in love with Houjicha latte. It was at a Starbuck. To be honest, I hate the coffee at Starbuck. So being social, I ordered their Houjicha latte, and have been stuck with it since. The fragrant of it was just wonderful! On my shopping list next should be Houjicha Powder! I know they exist cause I saw them on YouTube!

Anyway, to make Houjicha latte, boil hot water with Houjicha tea leaves for at least 3 minutes. I just added boil water to my tea leave. It wasn't as strong as I would have like it to be, cause my tea bags are usually packed for just plain tea. To make latte, you usually need more tea powder, or tea essence. So when my tea was ready after 3 minutes, I add full cream milk into it and the colour just turn a very light brown, almost white! Looking at it, it didn't look very promising. But when I took a sip, the distinct fragrant of the tea just hits you, and everything was alright again. I was happy, cause my version has no sugar in it. Although next time, I would make the tea a lot stronger. And maybe even heat up the milk and make some foam.... 

By the way, if you are wondering why you see a container of the famous Taiwanese milk tea in the first photo, it's because I use them to store my tea bags. I love it that they are so colourful, and since they are colour coded, I can remember which tea is in which container. So black is my Houjicha, pink is some left over tea which I think is green tea, green is my Gemaicha, and the light brown one is actually oats which I add to my hot milo. I really love them cause they are airtight, and easy to carry around. So if I feel like drinking tea in the office, I just throw one of these into my bag and bring it to the office. They store around 10 or so tea bags and look pretty on my table too!

Ref:

Houjicha Latte


Houjicha Pudding