Chai With Chocolate

Wanted a little more black tea kick this morning so I blended this 2 tsp chai with chocolate with 1 tsp english breakfast and made a successfully strong chai cup this morning. I hope the caffeine kicks in soon. Lots going on today. Hoping the thunderstorms don’t stop our company from coming! Meats are marinating and hor’d’ouerves are being made!

This is the second time I have drank this tea. The first time, I just steeped in my cup and added a splash of milk and drank. It was good. This time I made it stovetop with 3/4 cup water and 1/4 cup milk, 1 1/2 spoons of chai. Brought it all to a rolling boil, reduced heat and simmered 3 minutes. The ratios are not quite right. Any suggestions would be appreciated:) OK, Dumb question: When you make chai on the stovetop like this can you resteep the leaves?

Happy Christmas Eve!!

I’m finishing up the sample of this from my 12 days of tea box. This was a wonderful, wonderful idea, Frank. I think all of us who got one have really enjoyed it!

And on a happy note, my taste buds have returned!! Yay, more tea!

I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad to see the end of a sample. I’ve been drinking this over the last few days, almost always as a mid-morning tea. I’ve had a cold so I didn’t want to rate it until I could properly taste it. It is interesting that when I am drinking this tea it doesn’t necessarily knock my socks off, but yet I keep wanting more of it (what did you put in this tea Frank!).

I don’t normally like chai but I really like this. In the package, the tea has the scent of chocolate raisins. One brewed the tea is raisiny, chocolatey and has a fair amount of cinnamon flavor. It’s kind of like a mexican chocolate cupcake (esp when sweetened with agave nectar). I sure hope this is in the permanent collection because I am definitely going to need more of this (see reference to crack above).

BTW – there are thankfully no milk chocolate chips in this. I will have to verify with Frank that it is a typo and not just an oddity with my sample.

Taken with milk and sugar.
Wow CHOCOLATE!
And only 3 components that usually go into chai which are cardamom, cinnamon and ginger.
This is pretty fantastic. sip
I tried this without milk first and found that the cardamom over powers a little bit when the milk isn’t there to chill it out. With milk though it has the same after taste as that Indian dessert that is a frozen yogurt and cardamom mixture which is kinda similar to egg nog without that weird nog texture. And the fact that the Indian dessert is frozen solid. sip
About half way through the glass you get “used” to the chocolate taste so the flavoring spices and the tea start to show up a little more. The tea flavor is a good base but there is absolutely nothing stand out about that at all.
Spice wise… at first I thought that the blend might have been a little cardamom heavy but the ginger and chocolate are evening the flavor out quite well.
My only wish would be to have a little more cinnamon in the mix cause I do like that little kick but if that’s my only complaint with a chai they are doing pretty good. And I can put that in myself. :)

For the second tea of Christmas, Frank gave to us Chai with Chocolate.

I smelled the chocolate even as I was cutting open the packet and started thinking now which chocolate teas does Frank have in stock. I put my nose to the packet and smelled ginger strongly. Then I looked and knew it was a chai.

So the question was: To stovetop or not to stovetop? If I stovetopped, I’d use more of the sample and be able to try it less times. But it’s stovetop. So I went with stovetop. There was little decision there.

Sipping it while it’s still likely a bit to hot to drink, I get ginger then chocolate. I like ginger. =D This is good. Not Pina Colada Honeybush awesome good. But quite good.

I finish my extra large mug quite quickly. As I drink, I get ginger, chai blend, and chocolate at times. The chocolate is not majorly in your face but you can taste it and you can definitely smell it. This tea feels decadent to drink first thing in the morning.

I gave this tea a rating of 70 for now, which is right in the middle of my nice/good range (60-80).

1 cup water. 1 tbsp sugar. bring to boil. 1 tbsp tea. steep 5 mins. 1 cup milk. bring to boil. turn heat off. steep 10 min.

My electric kettle died this morning :(
RIP my lovely Russel Hobbs Stainless Steel Salsa – you served me faithful since 2004, and will be ever-so-missed .. Especially since I can’t seem to find a replacement that doesn’t have bits of plastic inside it ?!

Anyhoo, since I was brewing on the stove-top I decided to mix the last of my pouch with a couple of other dessert blacks that I’m not particularly fond of on their own: tleafT’s Vanilla Vice, & Caramel .. They seemed to compliment each other well so I made a big ’ol pot (well sauce-pan) of Sweet Milky Chocolatly Chai .. A nice note to end the day on :)

Made on the stovetop using the Samovar extra black tea method. Extra black tea today was LeafSpa Yunan Gold. I love those sorts of names for teas. Makes me think of action movies involving drug cartels.

The Yunan Gold has a very thick mouthfeel, which I thought would make it a particularly good candidate to add to chai to help along the chewiness.

Yum. I can definitely taste the chocolate in this. It’s like someone mixed brownie and gingerbread batter together and liquified it. Or put another way, it’s like the Mayan Chocolate Chai but more chocolatey and less spicy (the ingredients are the same except for the cayenne pepper). It’s still nicely spiced, though. Although I do miss my black pepper. I wonder what adding a bit of black pepper would have done to it?

Definitely yum for a sleepy Wednesday afternoon pick me up.

This one is right up my alley! I love chai, and who doesn’t love chocolate? With soymilk and sugar, it tastes like a spiced hot chocolate. I’m getting cinnamon a bit more than the other spices, but that’s fine by me. I do wish I could taste the black tea more – I don’t think I prepared it too weak, but it’s hard to say for sure.

This is the first chai I coudl drink without reaching for milk and honey. However, I’m beginning to think I’m not using enough tea. Some of the other tasting notes talk about using two tsps, and I used 1 tsp for both this and the Chocolate Mint. I’m going to have to try both with 2 tsps.

That aside, this was a very yummy tea. Kind of heavy on the cardamon and ginger, but that didn’t detract from the whole. Still wasn’t really tasting the chocolate, but I am blaming that less on tea and more on the fact I was almost through the cup of tea before realizing I hadn’t put any milk in it.

The taste was so interesting that I just kept sipping. I definitely have to try this with milk and honey, but I could see drinking this without. I might look into more chais once I decide if I enjoy it as much as I find it interesting.