Vanilla Masala Chai Sweetener (for Cheater’s Chai)

It’s been raining CONSTANTLY in Tokyo, so I’ve been holed up in our apartment.  It’s the kind of weather that makes you want to take naps and drink big cups of spiced tea.  I revisited an old recipe that Carla and I were just talking about: my vanilla masala chai sweetener.  You add GROUND spices to sweet condensed milk and store it in the fridge (I stress that they’re ground spices, because Carla and I had a very confusing conversation where she asked me if the tea was chunky because of all the spices in it.  I wasn’t clear about the ground part, and she thought there were whole cloves and cardamom pods, etc. floating in the tea!  Oops!).  Spoon the mixture into super-strong black tea for a sweet, spicy, milky, treat.  

I tweaked the recipe slightly and updated the photos, so if you’ve seen it before you may want to check out the newer post.  I always add a little extra sweetener to my chai, so I figured I should just add it directly to the concentrate to make it even easier to prepare the final product.  If you like chai but don’t like the fuss of making it the traditional way, you should definitely give this recipe a shot!

Click through here for the updated post.