After falling in love with Prana Chai a while back, I wanted to come up with my own version of sticky chai with even more benefits. I love value adding to my everyday food and drinks.

I am a tea lover (although I also love my one daily coffee) and consider it a wonderful drink with many health benefits. Tea, along with fruit, vegetables, red wine and chocolate, is full of flavonoids, which have been shown to be beneficial for cardiovascular health, can help reduce the risk of strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, cancer and more. Tea also contains an amino acid called L-theanine which can improve alertness and focus, as well as caffeine which also amplifies these effects.

So on top of the benefits of drinking tea, the other spices in sticky chai have their own many benefits, and then there is the honey and milk as well.

This is pretty easy to make, and you can use what you have on hand and experiment with all sorts of variations. Some suggestions below.

These proportions make about a peanut butter size jar worth.

Spice ingredients:

Whole spices work best- I buy mine online

12 cardamon pods

1 inch piece of ginger, grated, or 1 tb dried ginger pieces

4 cloves

2 tsp fennel seeds

4 star anise

3 cinnamon quills or 1/3 cup cinnamon chips

pinch saffron (optional)

Tea:

1.5 cups tea leaves of your choice (black, green, oolong, rooibos etc). I love oolong which I use like black tea but has the benefits of green tea.

Honey:

1/4 cup honey of your choice

Optional extras:

1/2 cup dried rose petals or dried lavender

1/2 cup dried tulsi herb (sacred basil- goes well with tea with many health benefits)

1-2 drops of essential oil such as rose geranium, orange or cinnamon

2 tbs fresh grated orange peel or 2 tsp dried peel

vanilla liquid or powder

Method

Put the spices in a small pan and dry roast them just until they smell divine. Only 2 minutes or so.

Then put them into a blender or mortar and pestle and break them down but leave them chunky.

Then mix all the ingredients together- the spices, the tea and the honey, and any optional extras.

If you have used fresh herbs such as fresh ginger or orange peel, it is best to keep this in the fridge especially in summer.

Otherwise, I find this keeps well enough on the shelf for the few weeks it takes to get through a jar.

To make Chai for 2

3 tbs sticky chai mix

2 cups water

1/2 cup milk of your choice (I use 1/3 cup per person, I like my chai milky)

Put the sticky chai into the water in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add the milk and turn off the heat and let steep for 5 minutes. Strain into 2 mugs.

Enjoy.