Chai

With the weather turning nice and warm, delicious cold beverages are wonderful.  Right?  Well, a few months ago I came across this recipe for chai concentrate.  In case you're not familiar with what that is, if you go to the tea aisle in the local grocery store, on the top shelf there are often boxes that look like this:


At Walmart one box like the above costs $7.67. I don't know about you, but that doesn't work in my budget very well. But now we can make our own, which means you can make delicious iced chai lattes!

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp. minced ginger
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 8 whole cloves
• 2 heaping demitasse spoons powdered cardamon (or 15-20 green cardamon pods)
• 2 cap fulls non alcohol vanilla extract
• 2 dashes of nutmeg
• 2 heaping Tbsps sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 4 cups water
• 6 Bigelow Darjeeling Blend tea bags, or other black tea bag (I used English Breakfast)

Directions:
Put everything except the tea bags into the crock pot (recipe called for 1 1/2 qt. crock pot but I used my 5 1/2 qt. and it worked fine). Cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 7-8 hours. After long simmer, if heat is not on high turn to high. Add tea bags. Let steep for 5-10 minutes. Remove tea bags and press with spoon to get all water out. Pour crock contents over strainer into 1 quart resealable beverage container. Add water to make 1 quart. This will get you what comes in the box pictured above. Serve (see below) or store in fridge.


To serve:

To make iced or hot Chai Latte, add equal parts concentrate to milk and serve over ice or heat in microwave or use conventional steamer. (We like it hot with a mix of skim and whole milk, but iced with just skim. We also tried it in a milkshake!)

Easy - yes
Different - yes
Delicious - absolutely

Recipe found at Vegetarian Slow Cooker