Cup of Chai
A saucepan and a mug, and you.
Ingredients
- 1 tsp sugar, preferably brown sugar. If you prefer to use honey best to stir it into the mug after everything has brewed to keep the flavor fresh so it doesn’t overheat. If you are diabetic you can use 1/8 tsp stevia powder or 5 drops stevia extract instead
- A black tea bag or 1 and ½ tsp loose leaf black tea
- 1/8 tsp pumpkin spice blend, or equal parts (roughly) cinnamon, clove, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg
- Either 3 ¼” (roughly 1 cm) slices of peeled fresh ginger, or 1 piece of dried ginger, or ¼ tsp ginger powder, or 1 tbsp candied ginger (skip the last one if diabetic)
- 3 pinches cardamom powder
- 1 pinch of black pepper
- 1 pinch or up to 3 pinches of cayenne pepper (optional, if you want it spicy)
- 3 pinches of turmeric and ¼ tsp oil, ghee, or butter if you want to make it sort of like Ayurvedic Golden Milk (optional)
- 1 and ¼ c. milk, any kind including coconut or almond, unsweetened almond if you’re diabetic
Directions
- Add everything but the milk small saucepan with a lid first, then add the milk. It may seem like a lot but the spices seem to soak up a lot of it and some seems to evaporate
- Stir all ingredients in a small saucepan with a lid with a wooden spoon or nonstick spatula, over lowest heat possible. You could even make this over a camp stove or candle if you had to. Cover it with a lid.
- Wait 22 minutes
- Pour through a strainer (or not, if you don’t mind ginger pieces and maybe black tea pieces in your mug) into a mug and serve right away
- Bonus: if you want to make a bulk version of this for later quicker versions, mix 12 tbsp tea leaves or contents of 8 tea bags, 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp sugar (preferably brown; optional), 1 tsp pumpkin spice, 2 tsp ginger powder or 8 tbsp candied ginger, ½ tsp cardamom powder, 1/8 scant tsp black pepper, 1/8 scant to ¼ tsp cayenne pepper (optional), ½ tsp turmeric (optional), and use 1 and ½ tsp mix per batch of 1 and 1/4 c. milk and sweetener of your choice
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