I’MMMMM OONNNNN FIIIIRRRRREEEE! But it hurts sooooo good! Lol.
First off, let me say that I made this on the stovetop using the same method I’ve been using for all chai lately, and whoa — this stuff is so spicy that the usual stovetop method most assuredly overdoes the amount of chai because of the strength of the cayenne. I’m thinking half what I put in would likely have done the job.
Second, let me say that though I obviously need to work on the ratios, I think the stovetop is definitely the way to go with this. I haven’t tried it otherwise, but I really don’t have any desire to because the chewiness of the milk makes it taste like hot cocoa duking it out with chai in my cup, with tabasco thrown in to complicate matters.
The fragrance of the mixture in the package seems deceptively mild, until after a little bit your eyes start watering. It smells like chocolate/ginger/pepper and quite nommy. It’s also quite pretty — there are huge sliced almonds in the mixture and tiny little red spheres of pepper.
After cooking, it smells like a very peppery, gingery chai. And wow, that’s exactly what it tastes like. Before this, the Rishi Masala chai was the spiciest chai I’d had, and this is much spicier than that. It’s very tasty, once you get over the shock of how spicy it is.
The only downside, really, is that in the end, the spice seems to win the fight with the chocolate. So while I can taste the chocolate around the edges, I wish I could taste it more front and center. Perhaps changing up how I prepare this will get me closer to a deeper chocolatey taste.
I love spicy stuff, though the older I get the less I can tolerate comfortably. Though I could easily have had this every day twenty years ago, now it’s likely to be the sort of thing I’ll have to pay for later ;-) so I’ll have to factor that in to when and how I partake of this.
But whoa, what fun!
