This and that: Anise

Showing posts with label Anise. Show all posts

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Orange Anise Cookies ~ Fill the Cookie Jar

Orange and anise flavour in each bite of these melt in your mouth cookies.

March Surprise Recipe Swap - Chai Tea Bread

March Surprise Recipe Swap

Jutta from Hungry Little Girl started this Surprise Recipe Swap.I believe that this is the third month but it is the first month for me. We were given a blog partner at the first of the month, giving us a couple of weeks to go through our partner's blog and find a recipe to make. Then on the 20th you will post the recipe that you made. I love this idea as going through someone else's blog and finding recipes are so much fun. I know this makes me go though the blog as with my busy life I don't always make time to do this, so this way I have to go and read someone else's blog. If you want to participate in this, head over to Hungry Little Girl and read what it entails and the few simple rules that there are.

This month CJ from Morsel of Life is my Surprise Recipe Swap partner. At the beginning of the month I went through her blog, finding many recipes that I wanted to make. I wrote down about 8 recipes and then the next step was to pick one of them. That was the hard part.. which one do I make. After some humming and hawing I decide to make her Chai Tea Bread recipe. I love Chai and I knew that I had wanted to make this already as I had left a comment on this recipe.

As you know I very seldom make a recipe the way it is written.. Mainly because I don't always read the recipe and another reason is that I believe a recipe is a guide and you need to make it to your taste. I also made mine in 2 Welcome Home paper loaf pans as even though we have 10 feet of snow and it is still snowing, today the 20th is the first day of spring and I wanted something that looked springy.

Chai Tea Bread

adapted from Morsels of Life

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups flour ( I used 1 cup white and 1 cup whole wheat as the recipe stated)

3/4 tsp cardamom (ground)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cloves

1/8 tsp anise (ground)

2 tsp baking powder

Wet Ingredients:

1/4 cup coconut oil (I used Tradition Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil)

1/2 cup honey

2 eggs

3/8 cup milk (I used evaporated milk)

1/2 cup Chai concentrate or Chai tea (I used Chai tea as was to lazy to make some concentrate)

2 tsp vanilla

1/8 cup coconut

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients together in bowl. In mixing bowl combine wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix until barely moist. Pour into greased loaf pan or I used 2 paper Welcome Home loaf pans. Sprinkle coconut over top of loaf. Bake for 50 minutes if using one loaf pan or mine took about 35 minutes with the 2 paper loaf pans.

Enjoy

Enjoy with a cup of Chai Tea

I loved the spices in this bread and it is not too sweet. Just perfect to have with a cup of tea. I had a couple of pieces for breakfast this morning. I had planned on putting some ripe banana's into this last night when I made it but thought I would wait... I think bananas would be a perfect addition to this wonderful bread. To find the original recipe, go HERE.

✻ღϠ₡ღ✻ Marlys

(¯`✻´¯)
`*.¸.*✻✿*.¸.*✻ Enjoy your day....`*.¸.*✻✿*.¸.*✻

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Homemade White Chai Concentrate

I am a big tea drinker... love tea and Chai tea especially...

I have at least once cup a day if not more often.

I have thought many times to make my own and today was the day..

Maybe because it is -40F degrees out and we have 10 feet of snow outside...

Ok maybe not -40 but at least -7F and we probably only have about 3 feet but it felt like 10 feet when I was shoveling today.

So a cup of Chai just hit the spot.

I decided that I would make my Chai with white tea instead of black.

I found a few recipes that sounded good to make a recipe.

These are the recipes that I read ~ Tasty Yummies, Tasty Kitchen and Healthful Pursuits

and this is what I came up with...

Homemade White Chai Concentrate

4 1/2 cup water

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp peppercorn

3/4 of fresh nutmeg

7 cardamom

1/4 tsp anise

1 star anise

2 cinnamon sticks

1/2 in fresh ginger

1 tsp orange peel

1/2 tsp lemon peel

1 vanilla pod

8 white tea bags

1 tbsp honey

Cheesecloth and twine

Place cheesecloth on table and add peppercorn, nutmeg, cardamom, anise, ginger, nutmeg orange peel, lemon peel and vanilla pod (cut in thirds). Bring up edges of cheesecloth and tie around spices. Set aside.

In pot place water and brown sugar, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add tea bags, spice mixture, star anise and cinnamon sticks. Simmer for 20 minutes. Cool and place in jar. Makes approximately 1 quart. Can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Spices

add teabag, cinnamon sticks and star anise

To make Chai Latte, add chai concentrate to milk of your choice. Most instructions say to use 1 part chai concentrate to 3 parts milk but I like to do it half and half. I also like to use French Vanilla Creamer in my Chai... So I used evaporated milk and French Vanilla Creamer. I did run out of Creamer so used French Vanilla Syrup instead of the creamer and it tasted just as good. You can always heat the milk if you want, it makes the tea warmer. Chai can be enjoyed hot or cold.