Overall, I am very much in favor of anything lavender related as it’s a favorite essential oil of mine, and it smells amazing in soaps, and candles, and anything else you can find it in. It’s my favorite Bath & Body Works plug-in scent, so I make sure to keep a spray bottle of it by my bed, as well as carrying around a little satchel of it in my backpack.
It smells amazing, having a nice subtle floral scent and it’s great for helping you relax and get some fantastic sleep. Aside from smelling great, lavender can be very well suited as something in food as well, which is something I’ve been experimenting with recently.
I first had it as a tea, which may not have been the best experience. As someone not very partial to most teas, it felt too watery. It felt as if someone warmed up a mug of water, thrown in a few sprigs of lavender, and had forgotten about it before they began to drink it. Sure, it smelled nice and it definitely helped me sleep, but at what cost?
I’ve never been a fan of tea and of course, I know its good for you and I’ve read all the benefits but it hasn’t grown on me. Coffee, on the other hand, has never been something I’ve shied away from, even less if lavender is involved. If anything, it was much more intriguing to see this particular combination.
Coffee and lavender shouldn’t entirely make sense because it is supposed to wake you up while lavender, on the other hand, is supposed to help lull you to sleep. Together, the two seem like they would be struggling to see which would come to the top. In my experience, the coffee tends to reign over, both in taste and in its caffeinating power. I’ve had it four times–– at a farmer’s market, a coffee shop in Chicago’s Chinatown, on a quick road trip to Alabama, and at an art festival.
Each time, the coffee has tasted stronger than the lavender, but the flower is certainly still present. For those who haven’t had the chance to really taste it, the best way I can describe lavender is by comparing it to the way it smells as, the taste is basically identical. After forcing a friend to take a sip of a lavender latte, she couldn’t help but blurt out that it tasted like soap. While it wouldn’t be my go-to description, I also can’t entirely disagree with her.
It’s something I’ve been able to find aborad as well. After having given up on lavender flavored foods for a while, it sprung up while on a school trip to Budapest. It was there that my friends and I stumbled across an ice cream shop with a variety of flavors, one of them being white chocolate lavender. If anything, I figured the white chocolate would either balance out the floral taste or, if I was lucky, it would mostly overpower it. Sure, I could pick one of the other flavors, but my hesitation was nothing compared to my overall attachment to the flower.
It ended up being a nice balance between the two–– the sweetness of the white chocolate leaving room for the more floral taste, which in turn went well with the other two flavors I picked (chocolate and vanilla).
Despite its possible soap-like taste, I still urge everyone to try it if they can. It’s a fun little departure from your usual caramel and hazelnut syrups and its one that’s growing more common across many coffee shops.