aureate & aromatic

The twelfth drink of my thirty day book as a beverage series is a black sesame boba smoothie with raspberry puree. The colors were pulled from my paperback edition of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

I love the simplicity of this cover. The crow with the subtle towers/skyline in the wings: perfection! I used all of the colors shown – which weren’t a lot, haha. I feel the final drink was a pretty accurate recreation.

The way I still haven’t finished this book 😭 I’ve started it over a few times because I want to enjoy it in one go and it’s been months since I picked it up last. I’m binging it at the moment, hopefully my next post about it is a book review.

This beverage’s name is:

‘the grisha’s grail’

Name Explained: The grisha are, in simple terms, those who wield magic/have powers in the world of this novel. When you open the book you’re greeted by an image of a crow on a chalice. I chose grail since they’re somewhat synonymous with each other, and to keep the alliteration with ‘grisha’. The result is the name above. I’d considered having gray in the title at first, but I felt that didn’t sound very appetizing, haha.

Black Sesame Smoothie: Since I still have some black sesame paste from when I made my Raven Scholar drink, using it to get a gray hue for the smoothie was a no-brainer. To switch it up a bit, I blended it with ice so it was more smoothie like to pair well with the boba.

Boba: Once again relying on boba to represent the black in a book’s cover. I stuck with my usual brown sugar flavoring. I might try infusing the pearls with a flavor next time around, but for this one I kept it simple: a quick boil, strain, and cool.

Raspberry Puree: I used the raspberry jam/sauce I made for my Homegoing drink, look at me being resourceful and not wasting my fridge ingredients, haha. I’ve found raspberry to have a more red hue than strawberry, which would serve as a closer match to the cover. I’ve never had black sesame with something that wasn’t coffee or milk, so pairing it with raspberry seemed like a stretch, but it was pretty good!

RATING: Overall I’d give the final drink a 4.25.

Flavor Combination: The raspberry and sesame tasted nice together, it made me want to have a pastry of some kind with that flavor combination.

Ease: This drink was fairly simple for me since I had my black sesame paste and raspberry puree ready to go, but I assumed anyone else attempting to make this would not, so I factored in the whole process from scratch into the ease rating. Each component needed its own cooking time, and then a little bit of blending as well. Overall, not the hardest, but not the easiest. Using a premade sesame paste and store made jam would cut the prep time by half.

Appearance: I love the final result. I attempted to decorate the glasses with a bit of the raspberry but it didn’t hold well, haha. I docked a bit off the score because the gray of the black sesame wasn’t as dark as the cover, but I didn’t want to add any more paste as I felt the flavor would be too overpowering.

Ways to Improve: This was a dense beverage so I didn’t rate it too highly even though I enjoyed it simply on the principle that I just get brain freezes easily, haha. I think perhaps adding some more milk would thin it out and make it easier to drink, but I feel that could weaken the flavors slightly, so that’s a soft recommendation.

Here’s the spreadsheet for all of the tools and ingredients used:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r98ituvMhsrjiXfidDUlMtrU0u_YwIdNyY_rlxD-8YA/edit?gid=891834841#gid=891834841

I’ve also provided the information below for added ease~

Glass Bottles (alternative): https://amzn.to/4rHc36q

Glass Bottles (alternative): https://amzn.to/4pmxVlX

Organic Red Raspberries (exact): https://www.driscolls.com/berries/raspberries

Raspberry Puree (alternative): https://amzn.to/470wBOv

Black Sesame Seeds (exact): Black Sesame Seeds – assi

Raw Black Sesame Seeds (alternative): https://amzn.to/4arWucB

Roasted Black Sesame Seeds (alternative): https://amzn.to/4qk5sxa

White Sugar (exact): https://amzn.to/3N2bzbt

Brown Sugar (exact): https://amzn.to/3JQLQ49

Boba [Tapioca Pearls] (exact): https://amzn.to/4rO5Ci7

Boba [Tapioca Pearls] (alternative): https://amzn.to/4aAPmup

Agave (exact): https://amzn.to/3KzWfkO

Whole Milk (exact): https://fairlife.com/ultra-filtered-milk/whole-milk/

Ice Tray (exact): https://amzn.to/49eT38p

Blender (exact): https://amzn.to/4qDRSWt

A video showing the process should be up soon~

Thanks for reading, have a great week!
~ C.C.