Good info, thanks. I more then a few times making a strawberry cheese cake in different ways. The berry is weak and in the background. I'll try the shisha in a few days to see what steeping does to it. I tried some of the super low recipies by hics, he's knows his stuff and gets great reviews but I don't taste %s that low. I think your taste is closer to mine. I found a thread where you posted a bunch of recipes, if you are lady red. I read for hours and took notes, great stuff, you gave me a lot of ideas. Thanks for that. I don't have blueberry extra but will try to raise the bb wild and add some billberry and try to keep my creams down so the berry can be in the front. Do fruits need a long steep? I've got some peach steeping, at first taste, it's not there at all. I want some smack you in the face fruit flavors. that's for taking the time to help me.
No, I'm always just AndriaD -- I do have a blog post, with 3 of my very best recipes in it, including the shisha strawberry & cream.
As far as I know, fruits don't need any particular amount of time, at least that's what I've read. But then again, I've read that creams and custards do need steeping, yet in my strawberry & cream, I use a sufficient amount that no steeping is necessary or even desirable. I'm highly in favor of using sufficient flavoring to avoid steeping altogether, or failing that, reduce it to an absolute minimum -- when I cook a great meal, I don't put it on the shelf for a week or a month before eating it!
But then of course it must be observed that some flavors don't do well if you use "too much" -- TFA Blueberry Extra is a prime example -- more than 8% and the flavor completely vanishes, which is a mystery to me, but I've experienced it and know that it's true. Almost any tobacco-type flavor becomes VERY foul if you use more than a smidgen -- those other 2 recipes in my blog post are sweet tobacco type, and the way I get around that foulness is by using 2-3 diff tobacco type flavors together, to strengthen the taste without making it vomitous. With blueberry, I think 2-3 diff blueberries together is maybe the only way to get a really strong blueberry flavor.
With peach... well, I'm not really the best judge, since I'm kinda lukewarm on that flavor in any case, but I think it's another that can be either vanishingly weak, or downright foul -- TFA's Juicy Peach tastes perfumey to me, and INW's Peach tastes more like rotten or overripe peaches -- but Inawera is in Poland, so just what the hell do Poles know about peaches? That's a warm-climate fruit! Even here in Georgia, The Peach State, there are about a gazillion different versions of "peachtree" street road way parkway etc etc etc here in Atlanta, but you won't find peach trees actually producing peaches very much north of Macon! At least, not the great big juicy ones that come from S. GA!
Andria
