Chai | Premeditated Leftovers

Gluten-free Chai Spiced Sweet Potato Doughnuts

If you are a regular reader, you know this recipe was inevitable. I think just about anything can be made better with chai spices. I love sweet potatoes. And I am still having fun playing with my Donut Maker. So Chai Spiced Sweet Potato Doughnuts were a natural. The only question is: Why did it take me so long to create this recipe?

Instead of adding milk as the liquid, I made a cup of tea using Good Earth Chai Tea. I added 1/2 cup of tea and drank the rest while baking the doughnuts.

Gluten-Free Chai Spiced Sweet Potato Doughnuts

Recipe type: Doughnuts

Author: Alea

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: 12

Ingredients

1/2 cup oat flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 cup coconut palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cloves
dash white peppr
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sweet potato puree
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup chai tea

Directions

Doughnut Pan Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease doughnut pans.
In a medium bowl, mix flours, xanthan gum, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
Add sweet potato, egg, milk, and oil. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed just until mixed.
Fill the doughnut pans 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes or until tops are brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Place the doughnut pans on cooling rack and let the doughnuts cool in the pans.

Doughnut Maker Instructions

If using a donut maker, fill the bottom portion until it is just full. Close the lid and cook for 7 minutes or until the donuts are brown.
Remove the doughnuts and allow them to cool on a cooling rack.
Once the doughnuts are cool, spoon glaze over them.

These doughnuts are delicious plain, but if you really want to spoil your family you can drizzle vanilla glaze over the doughnuts.

Vanilla Glaze:

Ingredients:

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon + 1 teapoon milk (I use almond milk)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

Add sugar, milk, and vanilla to a small bowl. Mix well to ensure sugar is completely dissolved. Place wax paper or baking sheet beneath cooling rack. Spoon glaze over doughnuts.

This post is linked to Allergy-Free Wednesday and Gluten-Free Wednesday.

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Alea March 13, 2012 Featured, gluten free chai, gluten-free doughnuts 7 Comments

Gluten-free Chai Spiced Coffee Cake

This recipe caused a debate at our house. Our dilemna: Can you call a cake that contains tea, coffee cake? The one thing we all agreed on was that it was the best cake we have ever eaten for breakfast!

This cake contains chai tea and the topping includes chai spices. It is a delicous combination!

Gluten-free Chai Spiced Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup milk (I use almond milk to make this dairy-free)
4 Chai tea bags
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter (or dairy-free margarine)
1/4 cup applesauce or pear sauce
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup potato starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Topping Ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
2 tablespoons butter or df margarine, cold
1/2 teaspoon cardamon
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:

Heat the milk, but stop before it reaches a boil. Add tea bags to milk. Steep for 5 minutes. Squeeze the milk out of the teabags.

Cream together brown sugar, butter and applesauce. Add egg and mix well. Then, add in the milk and vanilla.

Mix the flours, xanthan gum, baking soda and salt together and add to the creamed mixture.

Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl.

Pour into a greased 9×13 glass baking dish. Sprinkle the topping with cinnamon and sugar.

Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes until the center of the cake is set.

Let sit for 15 minutes. Serve with coffee…or tea.

This post is linked to Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, Delicious Dish Tuesday, Let’s Do Brunch, Gluten-Free Wednesdays, and Full Plate Thursday.

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Alea January 16, 2012 Featured, gluten free chai, gluten free cake recipe 8 Comments

Chai Spiced Candied Nuts

My family loves candied nuts. I love how easy they are to make! They make a lovely and delicious gift for friends and neighbors at the holidays. One of the things I like about giving them as a food gift is that they are easy to package. You don’t have to worry about cutting even pieces, just toss them in a pretty tin and they are ready to be delivered.

I coat the nuts with chai spices. You may not have two of the spices in your cupboard: cardamon and white pepper. If you don’t have them, leave them out and you will have pumpkin pie spiced candied nuts instead.

Use whatever nuts are on sale to make this recipe or do as I do and use the leftover nuts from all of your other holiday baking. I used leftover pecans, walnuts, almonds, and peanuts. The possibilities are endless.

Ingredients:

2 egg whites
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
pinch white pepper
4 – 5 cups nuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In a medium bowl, beat egg whites until they are foamy.

Add sugar and spices to the egg white and thoroughly combine.

Add nuts to mixture and stir to coat.

Spread nuts in a thin layer on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Let cool on the cookie sheet. Store in a container with a lid.

This post has been linked to A Week of Handmade Gifts and Slightly Indulgent Tuesday.

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Alea November 30, 2011 Featured, recipes and cooking tips candy recipe, chai 6 Comments

Chai Spiced Divinity with Pecans

If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I love chai tea. I make Chai Lattes and I add chai tea and spices to anything I think I can get away with like sweet potatoes, pudding, and doughnuts. So it was only natural for me to want to try it in a candy!

Some of my friends complain that divinity is too sweet. Using chai tea in my divinity recipe seemed like the perfect way to offset the sweetness while adding a subtle undertone of spices.

I thought the tea would produce a dark divinity, especially when watching it boil:

However, I was happy to discover that the finished product was only mildly darker than plain divinity:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup water
2 Chai Tea bags ( I prefer Good Earth Chai Tea)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup (recipe for corn syrup substitute)
2 egg whites
1 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Equipment Needed:

Free standing mixer
Candy Thermometer

Directions:
(If you would like to see a pictorial tutorial, visit my How to Make Divinity post, the steps are the same.)

Heat 1/2 cup water to boiling, add tea bags, steep for 5 minutes.

In a large pot, mix sugar, corn syrup and tea. Cook over a medium-high heat, while stirring until the mixture comes to a boil.

Clip candy thermometer to the pan. Continue cooking over medium-high heat without stirring until it reaches 260 degrees ( hard-ball stage).

Once you no longer need to stir the sugar mixture, you can prepare the egg white. In a large mixing bowl, beat egg whites on medium until they form stiff peaks, when pushed with a spoon.

Gradually pour the hot sugar mixture in a thin stream over the egg whites, while the mixer is still set on medium After all of the hot mixture has been added to the egg whites, increase speed to high and beat for about 3 minutes.

Turn off mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Add vanilla. Continue beating on high until the candy starts to lose its gloss ( about 5-6 minutes). When beaters are lifted, the candy should fall in a thick ribbon and form a mound.

Stir in nuts, if you like, then drop with a tablespoon ( I use a 1 Tablespoon cookie Scoop) onto wax paper.

Let them set until they have cooled and the outer layer has become somewhat dry and not sticky ( 1 –2 hours). Store in an airtight container.

For more candy recipes visit my Candy Recipe Round Up.

This post has been linked to Foodie Friday, Friday Potluck, and Gallery of Favorites.

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Alea November 17, 2011 Featured, recipes and cooking tips candy recipes, chai 9 Comments

Gluten-Free Chai Doughnuts with Vanilla Glaze

Sometimes I amaze myself, like with these donuts. I love Chai spices, so I thought that steeping Chai tea in milk and then adding it to a vanilla doughnut recipe would yield delicious results, but I could not have predicted how well these doughnuts would turn out.

They look a little plain, but there is a lot of flavor packed within that plain vanilla exterior. I use Good Earth Chai Tea because I think Good Earth has a delicious blend of spices.

I am still having fun with my Sunbeam Donut Maker that I bought last week. Once again I used both the donut maker and my Norpro Donut Pans. The doughnuts cooked with the donut maker are prettier and cooked faster. The doughnuts cooked in donut pans were lighter and fluffier, with more of a muffin consistency to the final product. I have included directions for both cooking methods.

Gluten-Free Chai Spiced Doughnuts

Yield: 8 – 10 donuts
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Baking time: 12 – 15 minutes

Ingredients:

3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup potato starch
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup softened butter (I used coconut oil)
3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon milk (I used almond milk)
3 chai tea bags

Directions:

Bring milk to a boil. Place tea bags in milk and let them steep for 10 minutes. Squeeze milk out of bags and discard tea bags.

If using the oven preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease doughnut pans.

In a medium bowl, mix flours, potato starch, xanthan gum, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add egg, milk, butter or oil and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed just until mixed.

Fill the donut pans 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes or until tops are brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Place the donut pans on cooling rack and let the doughnuts cool in the pans.

If using a donut maker, fill the bottom portion until it is just full. Close the lid and cook for 7 minutes or until the donuts are
brown. Remove the doughnuts and allow them to finish cooling on a cooling rack.

Once the doughnuts are cool, spoon glaze over them.

Vanilla Glaze:

Ingredients:

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon + 1 teapoon milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Add sugar, milk, and vanilla to a small bowl. Mix well to ensure sugar is completely dissolved. Place wax paper or baking sheet beneath cooling rack. Spoon glaze over doughnuts.

And please do me a favor. If you are a long time reader, you know I don’t like food waste, so please don’t let the glaze drippings go to waste.

This post has been linked to Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

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Alea October 11, 2011 Featured, gluten free chai, gluten-free doughnuts 7 Comments

Chai Spiced French Toast

When I am out with my 4 year old, people often tell me to “enjoy this time because they grow up so fast”. I just smile and say that I will. I know the years fly by because my oldest child is 21, but I also know that there are days that feel like an eternity when you are the parent of a young child.

I do realize how precious time is and for that reason I especially appreciate my Thursday afternoons. My oldest son, Grant, gets out of college early on Thursdays and usually has lunch with me. Occasionally we go out, but usually we have lunch at home. I cherish our time together knowing that it won’t be long before he flies the nest. It is doubly nice because after we have lunch together, he usually gives me a break and takes his little brother outside to play. I find I am much better able to “enjoy this time” with my 4 year old after I have had a little break.

Today Grant requested scrambled eggs for lunch and I was happy to oblige! While I was getting the ingredients out, Grant unloaded the dishwasher and picked clover so I could make tea (and photographed it because his weird mom is a blogger). He was being so helpful that I decided to thank him by making French Toast to go with our breakfast for lunch. I couldn’t decide what spices to add and finally decided to add a little bit of all of our favorite spices and created Chai Spiced French Toast.

Use a shallow dish to make it easier to soak the bread in the egg mixture.

I use a Misto Oil Sprayer to coat my griddle with oil. You can melt 1 tablespoon of butter if you prefer.

Chai Spiced French Toast

Yield: 6 servings
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 8 – 12 minutes

Ingredients:

8 – 12 slices of bread (I used Udi’s Gluten Free)
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
a pinch cloves

Directions:

Place eggs in a large, shallow dish. Beat the eggs with a whisk or fork.

Add milk and spices and mix well.

Lay the bread in the egg mixture. Let it sit for a couple of seconds. Then flip it and let it sit on the other side for a few seconds.

Place on greased griddle. Cook on each side for 2 – 3 minutes or until the bread is browned.

Top with maple syrup. I served scrambled eggs, bacon and pluots with the French Toast.

This post is linked to Foodie Friday, Friday Potluck, and Gallery of Favorites.

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Alea October 6, 2011 Featured, recipes and cooking tips breakfast recipes, chai 7 Comments

Chai Spiced Pudding with Vanilla Whip Cream

This evening I had a wild idea to make Chai Spiced Pudding, the only problem was that until tonight I had only made two types of pudding: chocolate and chocolate. I was a little leery of just removing the chocolate from my recipes because I wasn’t sure how much the cocoa or chocolate chips affected the thickening process. So I turned to Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and was delighted with his Vanilla Pudding recipe. I liked it because it had the same base as my chocolate pudding recipes: milk, sugar, and cornstarch. And his method was similar to mine, so the recipe seemed as if it was intended for me to try out my idea.

Chai Spiced Pudding

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s Vanilla Pudding in How to Cook Everything

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole milk
3 chai spice black tea bags
2/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions:

1. Put 2 cups of whole milk in a medium sauce pan. Add tea bags and cook over medium-low heat until the milk just begins to steam.

2. Remove the tea bags and squeeze out the excess liquid into the milk. Stir in the sugar.

3. In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch with remaining milk. Use a fork or whisk to thoroughly blend the cornstarch into the milk, ensuring there are no lumps. Slowly add the cornstarch mixture to the milk. Cook, stirring regularly, until the mixture thickens and just starts to boil. Reduce heat to low and continue to cook, stirring, another 5 minutes.

4. Pour the pudding into a 1 quart dish or 4 – 6 small bowls. Put plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding to prevent the formation of a “skin”. Refrigerate until chilled.

Once the pudding is chilled, you can add whipped cream if you like.

Vanilla Whip Cream

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat heavy whipping cream on high until soft peaks form. Beat in vanilla and powdered sugar until firm peaks form.

I put my whipped cream in a frosting decorator press to dispense it:

Everyone in my family loved this pudding. My daughter even went so far as to request it for her birthday in place of cake. Now that I have a great base recipe, I am going to have lots of fun experimenting with other flavors!

I am linking this recipe up to Tackling Bittman and His Buddies Recipe Hop at A Moderate Life. This hop is open for the month of April. If you have shared a recipe inspired by a cookbook, link it up.

This post is also linked to Foodie Friday, Friday Potluck, and Feed Me, Tweet Me, Follow Me Home.

What are your favorite cookbooks?

Alea April 8, 2011 recipes and cooking tips chai, pudding recipes, recipes 9 Comments

Homemade Chai Latte

My daughter formed an addiction to Chai Lattes while studying on campus. I decided I could probably make a pot of tea for the price she was paying for one cup at the overpriced coffee store. Especially since latte is just Italian for milk and I can buy a half gallon of organic milk for the price of one of her store bought teas!

The ingredients are similar to other homemade Chai tea recipes, but I use a different technique that allows you to use ground spices without leaving a sludge at the bottom of your cup. I have tailored the spices to suit the tastes of my family. They prefer that I use a heavy hand with the cinnamon and a very light hand with the cloves. Adjust the spices and the sugar to your personal preferences.

Ingredients:

3 cups water
3 cups milk
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
pinch white pepper
6 black tea bags
1/3 – 1/2 cup honey or sugar

Directions:

1. In a medium sized pot, heat the milk, water, and the spices together until they begin to boil. Stir regularly to prevent the milk from scalding or forming a skin. Remove from heat as soon as the liquid begins to boil.

Add the tea bags. Place the pot over a low heat and allow the tea bags to steep for 5 minutes.
Place a colander over a container: Then line the colander with a thin cloth. I prefer a flour sack cloth.

Strain the tea through the thin cloth.

Remove the tea bags and squeeze any liquid out of them.
Return the strained tea to the pot and add the honey or sugar. Heat over a low fire until the honey or sugar is completely dissolved. Serve immediately.
Leftovers can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Reheat and mix well (especially if you used honey as it likes to settle on the bottom) before serving.

Feel free to share a link to your favorite homemade coffee, teas, and cocoas. Warm drinks are consumed in large quantities at our house in the winter!

This post is linked to Wholesome Whole Foods, Friday Potluck, Vegetarian Foodie Friday, Foodie Friday, and Food on Fridays.

Alea December 17, 2010 recipes and cooking tips chai, chai latte recipe, homemade tea recipes, recipes 15 Comments

Chai Spiced Sweet Potatoes

No, I did not marinate my sweet potatoes in tea. Did you realize that the overpriced tea you are buying from coffee shops is actually just black tea with spices, sugar, and milk added?

You probably have most of the spices in the cupboard…and you could be making your own tea…or you could use those same spices to season sweet potatoes!

Ingredients:

4 large sweet potatoes (or yams) cut into bite size pieces (I leave the skin on)
1/2 cup apple juice
1/4 cup honey
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon cloves
dash white pepper

Directions:

Spread the sweet potato pieces in a greased baking dish.

In a small bowl, combine apple juice, honey, and spices.

Drizzle spice mixture over the sweet potato. Toss to ensure the sweet potatoes are thoroughly coated.

Cook at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until fork tender: