Eats: Flavorings For Tea And Coffee

Hello! Brr - it'd gotten cold around here this past week, with the first snowfall of the season occurring, plus some blustery days as well. I was reaching for the tea kettle to fix myself a hot cup of tea after dinner. 

Tea can get a little boring for me sometimes, though, so I made the following recipe to spice things up a little:

Chai Spice Concentrate(source unknown)

1 teaspoon ground cardamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 - 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

Put all the above ingredients into a blender and blend until spice specks appear throughout the condensed milk. Put mixture into a jar and store in the refrigerator. It's best to let it sit a day before using to let flavors blend, but you can use it right away if desired. The chai spice concentrate should keep up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

To use, brew a cup of tea and add chai spice concentrate (recipe writer suggested using 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup of tea)while the tea is steeping. 

Notes: I don't bother to measure the concentrate; I just spoon some out. The mixture is quite thick, so I recommend storing it in a wide-mouthed jar (ie one you can easily stick a spoon into!)

Although I enjoy drinking tea on occasion, my husband and I are coffee drinkers as well. He's developed a fondness for flavored syrups to add to coffee, so I have a couple of recipes that I use throughout the year. I'd already posted about the candy cane syrup I make in the winter (as seen HERE), but at other times of the year I make Simple Vanilla Syrup. Its recipe can be found HERE. 

Note: if you look at the Simple Vanilla Syrup recipe, you'll see that it calls for 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. I felt this amount made for a rather mild vanilla flavor, so I usually double the amount of vanilla. You may wish to try the recipe as written to see how it tastes to you. 

So now you have a couple of recipes to add flavor to hot beverages. Now, if we could only get fall temperatures to come back! I like these recipes - but I'd rather it still felt like fall around here.