This versatile dessert can be made classic-style or easily adjusted to be gluten-free or vegan, or both!

3/4 cup flour (for gluten-free, use Bob's red milll 1:1 Gluten free baking flour)
1/4 Cup packed brown sugar
1/2 Cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 Cup old-fashioned oats
8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter (for vegan use Earth Balance "butter")
3 lbs baking apples (6-8 apples, depending on size)
2 T lemon juice
2 1/2 tsp finely ground loose leaf Original Chico Chai (separated)

Preheat oven to 375
Mix flour, brown sugar salt and 1 1/2 tsp of the ground chai in a large bowl. Cut butter into the mixture until it's the texture of coarse meal. Add oats and toss and squeeze with your hands until completely combined.
In another bowl, combine apples with lemon juice, white sugar and the final teaspoon of ground chai. 
In a 2 quart baking dish, place apple mixture and sprinkle topping.
Bake until golden and bubbling, about 55 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving, top with ice cream/coconut ice cream if desired.

Our market special for October is Hot Apple Chai-der!
(Organic apple juice spiced with our chai) It's our favorite part of the season. We'll be featuring it at our Saturday Chico Farmers' Market booth throughout October.

No time for the market/Not in Chico? Not a problem!

It's soooo easy to make at home, either from our chai concentrate or our loose leaf chai:

Starting from our Chai Concentrate:
Combine our chai concentrate with equal parts apple juice and heat in microwave or on stovetop (that’s it!)

Starting from our Original loose leaf chai:
add 1 Tbsp chai to 1 cup apple juice and simmer on the stovetop for about 5 minutes or until the spice is just right for you. Strain into a cup.
>(get some more loose leaf chai)

Enjoy!

Dear Chai Friends,

You’ve seen the news, so you know that as things are starting to look hopeful in parts of the US, India is facing a new wave of hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid. Things are really dire.
As a chai maker, I literally owe my livelihood to the people of India and the rest of South Asia. As a very small business, we can’t do everything, but we have to do something.

This week, 100% of the profits from our Original Chai, our most popular blend, will go to Khaana Chahiye , a citizens’ initiative based in Mumbai, to fight the hunger that goes hand in hand with the lockdown. This group feeds daily wage laborers, migrant workers and the unhoused, the most vulnerable part of the population.
(this fundraiser applies to sales from our online store AND our farmers' market booth this week!)

Have all the chai you need? Send someone a tin as a gift! Or better yet- donate to Khaana Chahiye directly! Literally every little bit helps.

And thank you!! 

Love,
Sarah

Why we need to stop saying "Chai Tea"

I was staying at a friends' house outside Delhi a few years back. They were excited about the fact that I had business making chai in the US, and we talked about it often. It was a topic dear to their heart, since chai is such an important part of their daily life. They made me their own chai, which was absolutely delicious. Then they took me aside and asked, with some humor in their eyes, "But why do Americans call it chai tea?"
It was a valid question. 

For those of us chai lovers who grew up in the US, outside of Indian culture, we learned to call this drink "chai tea", or even a "chai tea latte". The term was coined at coffeehouses, where it has been a menu staple since the 1990s.

But in the early days of my personal chai obsession, I learned that chai actually means tea in Hindi, and many other languages spoken throughout India and Pakistan. So saying "chai tea" is pretty redundant. It actually just means "tea...tea". It (kinda?) made sense at the time, it was a way of explaining this drink to a new audience, building the English translation directly into the name.

The specific term for the type of chai we're talking about is Masala Chai (spice tea). Often this is shorthanded to just plain "chai", and has endless recipe variations, depending on regional tendencies and familial traditions.

I've been making chai for a living for 16 years, and I never used to correct folks who order a "chai tea" at my farmers' market booth. I'm not of Indian descent, so I don't have the deep-rooted cultural experience with chai that folks of the Indian diaspora had, so I felt like it wasn't my place, like I was overstepping my bounds as an outsider. I also knew that my customers are respectful, lovely people who absolutely meant well and thought it was the correct term.

But I had a conversation with a Punjabi-American chai friend recently, who said she definitely corrects anyone who calls chai by this improper name. It hit me then that I have a responsibility to pass the knowledge on to my customers. I realized that if I'm teaching folks how brew and enjoy chai, I definitely need to teach people the right way to say it.

I'm still (always) learning about chai and the traditions that surround it, but I want to pass on what I learn.

So for now, dear chai friends, in order to pay respect (in a small but important way) to the culture that created this wonderful drink that we love- let's call it by its proper name. Chai. Or better yet- Masala Chai! 

Love, Sarah
PS-Thanks for listening to my thoughts on this topic, SO much to talk about here, but I tried to keep it simple, especially since I'm better at making chai than writing;)

For more on this topic, directly from folks of the South Asian diaspora, check out these articles:

NYC's Kolkata Chai Co. Wants to Reclaim Chai's Narrative

Why You Should Never Use The Phrase "Chai Tea"