Awesome (And Economical) Chai Concentrate

This is supposed to be refrigerated for 24 hours before using, but you know how it is when you're the Chef...I just couldn't let any of that delectible stuff go to waste. I made up a fresh hot cup of strong black tea and used it to 'rinse' the blender--figured there had to be somewhere between 1/2-2 teaspoons left in there. It was superb and I know it's just going to get better! Rather than use a can of boughten sweetened condensed milk, I mixed up a batch from an excellent copycat recipe I have, then added the rest of this recipe to it. I will definitely be keeping this on hand!!! Thank you for sharing! :-))

Oh wow! I love chai, but can't always drink it since it's inherently dairy, and I try to avoid dairy, at least on weekdays. This stuff was amazing. I make my own copycat sweetened condensed milk with soymilk powder, and there I had it, non-dairy chai. I'm also not to thrilled with the taste of cloves, so I left those out and added vanilla extract. I made my first cup with some green tea, and I was in heaven. It's been about 4 days now, and I keep experimenting with the different teas that I have. My favorite so far is with an almond tea. Sarah, I'm starting to get addicted to your recipes, thanks so much!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! This recipe is soooo easy and very good...I haven't found one that had just the "right" taste..either too strong or you could taste one of the spices more than the others. This one is perfect!! I made this one with the exact ingredients called for, but I am also going to make the next batch with the homemade condensed milk from the Copycat site.

Great stuff! I added a dash of pepper (fresh ground black/white/green mix) and a touch of vanilla. Taste great in tea, coffee and hot cocoa. I put it in one of those shaker cups with the slotted disk in the top (a hidden valley ranch shaker if you must know!)Its not gonna last long enough to freeze!

Response to Ejnei: I wanted to reply to your comment to let you know that I did not receive any communication from Recipezaar on your behalf. I emailed Gay and Troy and they noted that sometimes these things do not go through for whatever reason. Nonetheless, I did not want you to think that I wasn't responding to your communication. That said, I want to let you know how I calculated the servings and also respond to your comment about the freezing issue. First, there are about 74 teaspoons in 14 ounces or a generous 5 teaspoons per ounce. Each serving, as I noted it in the recipe, is up to 2 teaspoons or .46 of an ounce. So, if each serving is calculated at the maximum you have 30 generous servings. If each is calculated at the minimum, you have 40 or more. Regarding the freezing issue, it sounds like you filled your ice cube trays full instead of in the individual serving sizes of between 1/2 and 2 tsps per ice cube slot. Also, I use the unsweetened condensed milk for this recipe because I cook for a diabetic who needs to use sugar alternatives. I have not had any problems freezing the unsweetened version. However, I did make a batch with the sweetened condensed milk and I agree with your comment that it doesn't freeze well. To solve the problem for the sweetened version, I brewed 1 serving of tea, added my batch of concentrate and poured the frozen brew into the cube trays with good result. The batch of chai that I made using the tea version of the concentrate required 2 cubes instead of one, but the taste was the same as if made the regular way. I hope that you will try the recipe again. Clearly these things are subject to personal preference and it may be that you like your chai spicer than I do. I would encourage you to experiment with using more concentrate until you get the taste you like. Maybe this recipe will only make 10-15 cups of chai for you.... but I do hope they'll be good ones! Thanks for taking the time to post your review, Sarah