Variable Temperature Electric Kettle

If I’m going to brew a french press or want to make tea for more than just one or two, I turn to using a trusty stove top kettle to make the required amount. It’s quick and hasn’t let me down yet – although you do need to stay on top of it to watch when the water boils. This Variable Temperature Electric Kettle from Breville has some interesting advantages over the traditional stove top kettle.

The Breville kettle does a lot more than just boil water. It allows you to quickly bring water to a preset temperature – and includes temperatures for green tea, white tea, oolong tea,black tea and French press, in addition to boiling – and will hold that same temperature for up to 20 minutes. The ‘hold’ feature is extremely convenient if you like to work or take care of things around the house while you’re waiting to make tea. There’s a safety shut off, in case you get too distracted and forget you left the kettle on. It holds 60-oz and has an easy to read water gauge on the side.

The downside is that the Kettle is pricey – no surprise given all its features – but if you can find it on sale and know you’ll make good use of a new kettle, you can’t go too far wrong with this one.

Mocha Pudding Cake

Chocolate pudding cakes are the quick-fix way to make a molten chocolate cake. They’re cakes that bake into two layers in the oven all on their own – a light cake and a rich chocolate sauce.  Coffee is a great way to boost the flavor of chocolate and make it seem more intense, so it’s usually a great addition to a chocolate dessert. In the case of this cake, there is so much coffee that the whole dessert takes on a mocha flavor.

The pudding is smooth and chocolaty, with a consistency somewhere between warm pudding and chocolate sauce. It adds a lot of moisture to the chocolate cake layer, which is fairly thin, but provides the perfect amount of cake to go with the sauce. The dessert is easy to make and is a great way to use up the coffee still in the pot after you’ve already had a cup or two.

If you don’t want so much mocha, you can always opt for a regular chocolate pudding cake, instead.

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The best ground coffee from CR

The best selling coffees in the US are preground and sold in the supermarket. Preground beans have been making coffee drinking easier for the last 100 years, since Maxwell House started selling ground coffee back in 1907. There is a huge variety to choose from these days, and Consumer Reports set out a taste test to try and narrow down the field. They only tasted Colombian coffee and compared price, caffeine level and taste on all brands.

Their top pick – the best tasting and a Best Buy for value – was Eight O’Cock Coffee. It cost less than half of some of the “boutique” brands ($6.28/lb), but delivered a good, smooth coffee flavor that the tasters really enjoyed, with earthy and fruity notes and no burnt or over-roasted taste.

Their two runners up were Caribou COffee’s Colombia Timana and Kickapoo Coffee’s Organic Colombia. None of the coffees rated were bad, but the panel only gave Starbucks, Bucks County, Archer Grams, Gloria Jeans, Chock Full O’Nuts, Peet’s, Maxwell House and  Folgers Gourmet “good” ratings.

On the decaf side, none of the coffees garnered a “very good” rating, but Dunkin Donuts Dunkin Decaf, Millstone’s Decaf Colombian garnered average ratings and beat out the rest.

Alessi Tea Strainer

Alessi has such a great sense of fun throughout their entire kitchenware line, and this cute little tea strainer is no exception. The Alessi Te O Tea Strainer is a hands-off tea strainer. Its design is that of a playfull little man (creature?) holding up a straining bowl; his hands do the work for you, so there is no need to burn your fingers trying to squeeze a hot tea bag. Simply drop your bag into the strainer and let it sit for a minute. I can’t really overstate the cuteness of this little guy. It would be a great gift for a tea lover, for just about any occasion.

Starbucks Ethiopia Sun-Dried Sidamo, reviewed

Starbucks’ Ethiopia Sun-Dried Sidamo Coffee is a blend that has been available for a couple of weeks now, but I hadn’t gotten around to trying until recently. It’s a limited edition blend and, like the Aged Sumatra that I tasted a few weeks back, it comes in a 12-oz bag inside a custom box bearing the Sidamo logo (some sort of tribal-looking sun/mask). I have to say that I am a bit more partial to the Sumatra’s tiger logo, though that doesn’t impact the coffee in any way.

The information that comes with this coffee basically says that the beans are produced using one of the oldest coffee-processing methods around: sun drying. Many mass-produced beans are stripped from the inside of the coffee cherry, fermented mechanically and then tried. Sun drying beans simply means that the beans are left inside the coffee cherries and the fruit-like cherry is allowed to dry out naturally, leaving a shell that can easily be removed from the bean.

The Sidamo has a medium-dark roast, much lighter than the aged Sumatra, and has a much smokier flavor, with strong cocoa notes. It is fairly light bodied and seems to have a fruity, slightly acidic finish. While it’s a nice coffee, it’s not as distinctive and rich as the Sumatra.