I promised I would deliver on the fall recipes, and today I did 3 of them. So here's the first: Homemade Chai Tea Latte, served hot or iced. I started making this over the summer and it is a very good recipe. I based it off of a few different recipes that I found online. Overall, it's pretty simple, and you can go a lot of different directions with the chai concentrate. So here's what you need:
To make the chai concentrate:
- 8 Vanilla Chai Tea bags (I like to buy the boxes of Bigelow)
- 4 cups of water
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- dash of black pepper
- honey (optional)
-Bring the water to boiling in a medium saucepan. If you want to make a larger quantity of the concentrate, just go by the rule of 2 tea bags per 1 cup water.
-Once the water is boiling, add the pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, dash of black pepper and a drizzle of honey if you so please.
-Take the tea bags and tie them together at the top, it makes it much more manageable to keep track of them all.
-Steep the tea bags in the boiling water, give it all a good stir and then remove from heat and throw a cover on it. When steeping the tea bags be careful to not let the tags catch fire from the burner! I don't want any readers with a fire on their hands! I usually make this when I'm doing something else so I'll leave it sitting there anywhere from 15-60 minutes. The longer you let it steep the more concentrated the flavors will be.
-When it's done steeping, you can either make a hot chai tea latte by following the directions below or you can throw it in a mason jar with a cover or whatever else you would like to store it in and put it in the fridge to cool. I have kept the concentrate in the fridge for up to a week and it was still good.
To make the latte (served iced or hot):
-chai concentrate
-milk of choice (I use almond milk)
-sweetener of choice: sweetened condensed milk is really the secret ingredient that gives you that coffee shop taste. You can also use sugar, or whatever you prefer.
To give it a Pumpkin Spice twist:
-Add a bit of pumpkin spice coffee creamer.
I usually do 1/2 chai concentrate and 1/2 milk with a 1/2 to 1 tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk. In this case I actually did 1/2 concentrate, 1/2 milk and then just a dash of pumpkin spice coffee creamer, and it turned out pretty fantastic. So this is where you can really experiment with your own taste buds and see what you prefer. Serve hot or iced, either makes a delicious drink.
