Welcome, newsletter subscriber! Here’s your holiday gift from me to you. Wish we could share time together drinking this and just being joy-filled.
So I love chai. I mean love love love it. I have been trying to wean myself off the “buy a chai” habit. A friend told me about a friend’s mother’s (still with me?) recipe. She said it was very good. And I trust her chai taste since she grew up with the stuff.
I got the recipe and made the first batch faithfully. It was tasty but not spicy enough. So I doctored it. My second batch was way too spicy and I like spicy. But I put in a full teaspoon of pepper and it nearly overwhelmed the mix. Funny how just a small amount of that can really upset the whole thing. I mean it’s not that it isn’t good. It is. But the last taste is this peppery-gingery note. I wanted it to blend more. So I doctored another batch. Here’s my final recipe. It’s different from what I got, but I’m very happy with it.
Arwen’s Homemade Chai Mix
2 cups dry nondairy creamer
2 cups unsweetened instant tea mix
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1/2 C vanilla sugar (no vanilla sugar? No worries. Just leave this out. It’s one of my add-in’s.)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon black pepper (if you don’t like chai with a bite, leave this out)
Mix it all up in a bowl. It will be a bit lumpy so work at it with a wooden spoon.
Now process it in a food processor (original recipe suggests 2 cups for 30-45 seconds). I used a clean coffee grinder. My neighbors probably wonder why I’m drinking so much coffee. LOL. I actually ran the entire batch back through the coffee grinder to make sure it was thoroughly ground up.
This makes about 5 Cups. I shared mine pretty liberally as it is a nice holiday gift!
To serve, put about 1/4 cup of the mix in a mug. Add a cup of hot water. Stir, stir and stir some more. You want it to dissolve. If you are fussy about crunchy drinks, either skip the very last sip or strain the drink through some cheesecloth before drinking.
SJ suggests adding the mix to heated milk for a thicker brew. I used almond milk (sweetened vanilla) and it was fabulous.
Thanks to SJ for sharing EB’s mom’s recipe with me. And thanks to all the cooks before me who taught me it’s okay to doctor a recipe to make it your own. MMMM