Homemade Chai Tea Gifts
The ordinary holiday cookie plate is out. Homemade chai tea is in!
I love giving gifts - even if it's to people I barely know (a.k.a. my coworkers at my new job). So, what better gifts to give, than DIY gifts? And with an affinity for chai tea, I made it, labeled it, and served it up to the crew. And everyone loved it!
Start by making your chai, then filling the bottles, and last but not least, decorating.
Chai Tea Recipe
I originally used the Tasty Kitchen Blog's chai tea recipe, but I made several changes because the recipe is too sweet and had a syrupy taste. My altered recipe is as follows (serving size, fills one recycled wine bottle, and makes about 3-4 coffee cups per bottle).
Ingredients:
- 5 cups of water
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 inches of fresh ginger root (approximately), skin removed and chopped
- 7 whole cardamom pods
- 1 tsp. of anise seed (you can also use 2 whole pods if you can find them)
- 10 whole cloves
- 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 10 - 12 black teabags
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 tbs. honey
- 1 tbs. vanilla extract
Note: All spices and herbs can be found at whole foods or any grocery store with a wide variety of spices.
Instructions:
In a large pot bring the water to a boil. Remove from heat., add tea and let it steep. As the tea is steeping, add spices, and steep an additional 20 minutes (about 30 minutes total). The more it steeps the stronger and spicier it will taste. Strain and add the brown sugar, honey, and vanilla. Stir to combine and dissolve.
To drink immediately, mix 1 part concentrate with one part milk. Serve over ice or heat as desired. If you plan on giving it as gifts or want to keep it for later use, do not add milk. Keep it as a concentrate and bottle.
Bottling and Decorating
Bottling and labeling is extremely easy. Most non-crafters think they could never do it, but spray mount is an amazing tool and works wonders to make labeling bottles easy.
Ingredients/Supplies:
- 1 used wine bottle, washed and label removed
- 1 wine cork
- 2 labels (front and back) printed on regular printer paper (nothing special, regular 8.5 x 11, 20lb. stock, or whatever you happen to have around the house - the thinner and cheaper the better)
- 1 ball of twine (or yarn, or whatever you have around the house)
- spray mount
- scissors
Instructions:
Before you start labeling, you will want to design a label for your bottle on your computer. I generally use the Adobe Creative Suite programs, but if you don't have them available, word or PowerPoint are super easy. I my labels 3.5" wide x 2.25" high (front) and 3.5" x 3.5" (back), but they can be any size.
Pour your chai tea into clean bottle. Make sure the bottle is completely dry before labeling. Cut out labels, spray the backside with spray mount and press label onto the bottle.
Wrap the top of the bottle with twine and tie off with a bow. This just makes it extra pretty.
And the finished product is a beautiful array of bottled chai tea. If you are making bulk like I did, I just tripled the batch, so I could get three bottles out of each batch.
