Make Your Own Chai and 10 Ways to Cook With It.

  I love drinking hot Chai in the winter when its cold and blistery out.  Since I am not a coffee drinker in any form, I rely on enjoying my chai.  Unfortunately, I don't like the powdered chai because it seems to have too many weird ingredients.

I know you can get the boxed concentrate with tea, spices, and sweetener already brewed together but it just doesn't taste as good as made from scratch. 

I usually buy the chai tea mix from a store, brew it with water and add brown sugar and milk to it but its time to learn to make my own totally from scratch.

Recipe 1
1/2 tsp each of ground black pepper and nutmeg,  2 tbsp each of ground cinnamon and ginger, 1 tbsp each of ground cardamon and cloves.
Mix 1/2 tsp of chai spices, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup milk, and 2 tbsp black tea.  Heat over medium heat to a slow simmer , remove from heat and allow to steep for 5 minutes.  Strain into a cup, sweeten, and enjoy.

Recipe 2
Slice a 2 inch piece of ginger into thin rounds. 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 tsp black peppercorns, 10 cloves of allspice, 6 cardamon pods. Add the spices to a saucepan.  Bruise them with a mallet or the back of a spoon.  Add 6 cups of cold water and heat till boiling, reduce heat to a simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove from the heat, add 6 black tea bags, and simmer for 5 minutes.  Discard teabags, add 2 cups of milk and 1/2 cup golden brown sugar.  Stir till dissolved.  Strain and serve.

The nicest thing about chair is you can cook with it in a variety of ways.

1. Baked Chai French Toast. Add 1 rounded tbsp of chai spice mix as found in recipe 1 to your normal egg mixture you use for french toast. Place bread in a buttered 8 by 13 inch pan.  Pour the egg mixture over.  Top with a mix of equal parts of flour and sugar (1/4 cup of each is good.) with 1 tsp of chai spice added in.  Soak for 30 minutes before baking at 350 degrees till nice and golden.  Eat as normal.

2. Use your usual recipe for carrot cake and use ground chai spices instead of the usual ones to make  a nice  change.

3. Take a pumpkin bread and substitute sweet potato and ground chai spices for a different flavor.

4. How about spicing up your oatmeal cookies with ground chai spice and finely diced apples.

5. If you make up a 1 1/4 cups of chai tea without the milk but with 1 cup of brown sugar. you can use it to poach 12 to 14 Bosc pears cut into 1/2 inch pieces.  The poaching takes about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat and cool.  Mix 1/4 cup of cornstarch with 1/2 cup of liquid from the pan, then stir in 1/4 cup of almonds.  Add the whole mixture to the poached pears mixture.  Stir well, then pour in a pan.  Create a crumble of 1/2 cup chai tea (no milk), 3 cups flour, 2 tbsp powdered sugar, 1 cup chilled butter. Spread over top and bake at 350 till done.

6. When you make pancakes, substitute chai tea in for the liquid to give a spicy flavor.

7. Take your pumpkin muffin recipe and modify it with ground chai spices and blueberries.

8. Then there is chai ice cream where you add in ground chai spices instead of vanilla flavoring.  On the other hand, chocolate chai is not a bad flavor.

9. Make an apple spice cake and replace the normal spices with chai spices to give it the chai taste.

10. Chai Tea Fudge using 4 cups of chai tea from recipe 2, 1 cup of brown sugar, and 2 tbsp maple syrup.  Cook over heat until reduced to one cup to make a chai syrup.  Mix 1 can of condensed milk, 1/4 cup cubed butter, pinch of salt, 2.5 cups of white chocolate chips, 3 tsp chai spices, and 2 tbsp chai syrup.    Mix the milk, butter and salt and cook in microwave on high for 3 minutes.  It will be bubbly and nice.  Add in the white chocolate chips till melted. Add in the chai spices and syrup, then place in pan till cool.  Cut when done.

Let me know how you like it.