Welcome to August’s In Purrsuit of Flavours. This month’s theme is tea, probably something near and dear to a British heart, right Norman?
Woof woof, mum!
As a general rule, I don’t normally drink tea but as someone who loves Indian food, I do very much enjoy a nice Chai tea with my meal or even with dessert. Chai also makes for a lovely substitute for coffee. Hot or iced, it can be a lovely change of pace beverage to begin one’s day.
So what is this beverage known as chai tea? Chai is the Hindi word for “tea,” which was derived from “cha,” the Chinese word for “tea”. Chai is a mix of spices steeped into a tea-like beverage. Recipes for chai vary across continents and cultures but traditional ingredients usually include black tea mixed with strong spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger and black peppercorns. The spiced tea mixture is typically brewed strong with milk and sweetened with sugar or honey. That milky, sweet tea treat ordered in coffee and tea shops today has very little in common with the origins of Indian chai. Premade chai tea beverages are available everywhere and may be costly but you can make a DIY easy to make dry chai mix as an alternative.
DIY Instant Chai Latte Mix (Courtesy of Southern In Law Blog)
[Makes one large jar of mix, equal to around 25-30 servings]
2 cups (250g) dry milk powder
1 1/4 cup (250g) coconut sugar *
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg**
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground cloves
- Add ingredients to blender or food processor (making sure it’s important so your milk powder doesn’t become moist and lumpy).
- Blend all the ingredients until everything is fine and incorporated.
- Store mix in an airtight jar or container.
* NOTE:
Brown or white sugar can be substituted for the coconut sugar which is made from the nectar of coconut palm tree flowers whereas brown sugar comes from either cane sugar or sugar beets, just like white sugar.
How to Use the Mix:
- To make a Chai Tea Latte: Brew black tea in a teapot or separate cup. Add 1-2 heaped tablespoons of mix to the bottom of your cup and pour the tea on top. Alternatively, add your dry mix to a saucepan, mix with a small amount of hot water to dissolve and add in milk and a tea bag, heating over a medium-low heat until heated through and your tea has steeped.
- To make a Dirty Chai: Add 1-2 tbsp of mix to the bottom of your mug and pour over hot brewed coffee, stirring to combine. Your can also make an iced coffee version, blending the mix in a blender with your iced coffee ingredients or dissolving the mix in a small amount of boiling water before adding your iced coffee ingredients.
Additional Notes:
- Like all the recipes shared here, these ingredients are a guide. Play around with the proportions, adding more/less spices, milk powder, and sugar to suit your own taste buds.
- Skim/nonfat or full fat milk powder can be used, according to your choice.
- If you don’t have coconut sugar, you can use regular white or brown sugar. Stevia or other sweeteners can also be substituted for the sugar.
- Paleo and Vegan Option: you can use coconut milk powder instead of milk powder here.
**The next time I whip up a batch, I will likely eliminate the nutmeg so avoid having tiny floating bits on the surface.
Live, love, bark! 🐾
Sorry, we don’t “do” tea around here, we are strictly coffee drinkers! 🙂
I love tea and drink it all day every day. I like green, herbal, fruity, and mostly black tea. I drink Chai now and then, but I’m not a fan of dairy, even alternative milks, so i don’t drink Chai very often. Thank you for the recipe, though, I think my son will love it!
We hope so!
I haven’t had Chai in ages. Might have to take a dip again.
Hope it’s enjoyable if you do. 🫖
I have’t had chai tea for quite a while, but I like to buy the teabags and add milk and a little stevia to it. (I’m lazy and take the easy way!)
🤣 good for you!
I’ve never shied from teas. I prefer decaf ones over others, BUT I’m sure there’s a decaf chai out there. I will add it to the mental list of things to try, especially if I can get a carrot cake with it!!!
Haha! I only wish I could make my carrot cake look like that! Yeah, the beauty about making that mix (especially if you like chai) is there’s no caffeine in it. 👍🏻
Not for me…I like British style tea and nothing beats starting the day with a cup of Ceylon tea and a sliced mango.
And here I figured you to be an Earl Grey kind of tea drinker, Helen. The mange slice seems like a nice chaser to the Ceylon and worthy of a slow savor.
I do like Earl Grey….so you are right, but the Ceylon seems to lift me more these days.
At least it is not trawler tea….you put to sea, put tea leaves in the pot, boil water and add…when tea consumed, add more leaves to pot, boil water and add…ad infinitum until you reach port or the pot is full of leaves. Said to put hair on your chest…..
Trawler tea…LOVE the explanation. You come up with some of the most charming expressions. I should think it’d put hair on your chest among several other places!! Yikes. Earl Grey is a nice tea that I’ve enjoyed in the past but I should check out Ceylon more closely. I’m pretty clueless about black teas in general so your recommendation goes a long way.
Okays, this is one thing Ma is just not a fan of. Gpa drinks it ALL the time, and the smell makes Ma nauseous. Can you believes that??! sigh. Okays, lots of things make Ma nauseous so that’s really no surprise BOL!!! Anyhu, I’m gonna gives your recipe to Gpa so he can torture Ma for me!!! 🤣
Kisses,
Ruby ♥
pees: gotta have that CAKE!!!!
Whoa…I’d think the smell of spices would be welcome if nothing else. Go figure.
Not really much of a tea person. I prefer to poison my system with an overload of coffee, strong and without milk. At the back of my mind I seem to recall people in Scotland referring to a cup of tea as a ” Cup of Cha (or char)” Perhaps a friend in Glasgow could help. I have something else on my mind to drink with my meal although this has been somewhat suspended since there are times when I don’t know where I will be after dinner – home or at the A & E. I have become (SAD!!) something of a Lemonade person. And this at a time when I have been given some interesting mixes to make and try.
Oh gosh, lemonade is so tasty on a hot summer’s day. Now you’ve got me jonesing for a big glass of it! Yum!
P. S. Good strong, black coffee sounds pretty tasty too. I know I enjoy it especially when the temps begin to drop.
Oh, but the taste of nutmeg is worth the bits. Yum yum.
😁 You make a good point besides, nutmeg smells so delish!
Forget the tea, my peeps want the cake.
🤣
Interesting recipe. Not my particular cup of…oh you know…but a billion or so folks from the Indian Sub-continent can’t be all wrong. We drink a ton of Japanese teas – ocha, sencha, mugicha, bancha, etc., – but usually only Fall through Spring. Summer is beer season doncha know. Unless you are talking Alabama sweet tea which is a very acceptable hot weather beverage.
Sweet tea doesn’t do it for me. I don’t find it very thirst quenching. Perhaps that’s why beer tastes so good in the summer.
Yeah, beer is the clear winner.
🍺 After 2 pm for sure.
What timing! I literally just finished a cup of Chai Spice tea. 😊❤
Whoa…that really is some kind of timing!
I’m a mocha coffee person but this sounds interesting.
If there’s ever a day when you’re interested in a change of pace, chai is a nice alternative.
I have all those ingredients here! Amazing!
I might sub out the coconut sugar…which I do have, but its too heavy on carbs for me right now; for stevia or monk fruit…or even swerve. I do not care for nutmeg, so I might add in a touch of allspice, or just omit it altogether.
This might make a good alternative to hot chocolate on a winter’s night…
Thanks for the recipe, its a keeper!
Dalton & Benji say their woofs of greetings to your chef-pup:)
And some more to Elsa, did she have a sample of the tea?? BOL!
Outstanding! Yeah, it could be ‘lightened’ up with Stevia or other sugar substitute but I was pleasantly surprised the coconut sugar wasn’t as sweet as I thought it might be. 😇
Elsa prefers squirrel tea. BOL
If I had to do over again, I’d have left the nutmeg out and increased the cinnamon, cardamom and/or cloves. 😉 I’ve not used monk fruit as a sweetener, do you have a lot of experience on the ratio to use?
Elsa, Norman….how youse doin? We haven’t stopped by since last month. You guys look so good. I see you’re helping with the cooking Norman. This tea recipe looks like a delicious mix. Mom loves Chai tea. Now, to find this mix in Canada. This recipe is going in our tea book for the future.
Thanks for joining our tea time, Monika and Norman
We’re good, though mostly counting down the days until autumn arrives (just 48 days).This dry mix is a nice alternative to the liquid chai (which is also yummy but pricey).
This sounds like it would be good. Don’t drink much tea but this sounds like a good reason to start.
It could be a nice alternative. 😉
Yes it does.
Mmmmm, this sounds delicious!
It’s not half bad for a mix!
I love tea, drink a lot of it. My favorites: Assam, Ceylon, and white of any type. I buy loose tea only, it makes at least 3 pots per filter. Lemon and fake sugar only, no spices or flavored tea. We used to have a really good tea shop in town, the owner listened to what I liked in tea, then told me what she didn’t like, since we had opposite tastes. She carried east African white tea, it cost about 1/3 as much as the more common silver needle.
I never realized the vast array of tea flavors and kinds. Amazing. As always, thanks for dropping by. We 💙 visitors.
I’m not much for tea either. I’m a coffee kind of gal.
Oh Norman you’re so adorably cute. You’ve made my day with your photograph in your chefs hat.
Have a fabulous day. Scritches all around, a smooch to Norman and a big hug to mom. ♥
There’s nothing quite like a good cuppa of java to start the day but sometimes a chai can be a nice alternative.
Norman is a such good sport for letting me dress him up and appreciates the smooches and scritches for it. Have a great day!
wow that sounds good. I don’t like prepared chai tea bags as they are too peppery for me but this sounds delish.. Of course I’d be concerned about it not mixing and becoming clumpy from my efforts. The only thing I don’t have is milk powder so I am considering combining the spices then when making it adding real milk, and real sugar instead.
Balancing peppery overtones in real chai can be a challenge so this recipe is a good way to enjoy chai without it. Normally I don’t have powdered milk but found a pack of it and thought a nice dry mix could be a good substitute to the expensive liquid varieties.
I used to drink tea quite frequently, but that’s long ago. Now it’s coffee only – but a lot of that. 😉
I still enjoy coffee, but have reduced my consumption for health reasons.
Compared to my coffee intake when I was still working, I have reduced mine a LOT. So much so that I don’t know how I can stay awake these days, on just about 5 – 6 mugs a day. 😀 In the “good old” days it used to be around 12 to 15 cups.
Luckily, my heart and blood pressure can tolerate it, and my stomach can still “stomach” my coffee intake.
Gulp! Good that your body can take that much coffee. I’d need a six-pack of beer to come down from the caffeine high. LOL
But tiny floating bits are normal 😉 And this sounds like a wonderful version over some packet sold like tea but tastes like blech. 😉 Plus, I have all the ingredients!
And when I have a hankering for chai, I call my neighbour Parvin (okay, was five houses down before and is now ’round the corner. Still) Now that we are talking about it, I am due for a visit with her… hmmm
Nutmeg can be a tad gritty (though it’s flavor and scent are delish). I’m planning on making a batch from scratch since I just picked up some cardamom seed pods but because it’s more labor intensive it’ll be a special treat and not something done quickly or spontaneously. Chai is even more fantabulous when shared with a friend. Enjoy a chai get-together with your friend.
Yes, it can (and it is delish, used in moderation). Mmmm. Parvin just heats up a few pods of this and that, adds milk, throws in a couple teabags and Bob’s your uncle! I haven’t seen what she sweetens it with.
But yes, you are absolutely right. Chai is best when sitting with a friend.
😍 That’d be the way I’d do it from scratch. Maybe sweeten with honey if it needed sweetness. But with the cinnamon and cardamom it might not need any additional sweetness.
So good. I’m fairly certain she sweetens it – but I’m now going to have to invite myself over soon 😉
👍🏻
But the bee picture inside the cup…. *cough* *gulp* Yikes!
Love and licks,
Cupcake
Luckily it’s a safe and friendly bee, Cupcake. 😉
This recipe looks great, I’ve only ever had chai latte out before but it makes me want to make it at home!
It’s nice to have a batch of it for when you want something different. Or when your Oregon Chai supply is out. LOL
Haha, yes I love the idea of making a batch of it!
😊