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  • Recipe: Cardamom Boba

    This is one of our most popular specials at our Chico Farmers' Market booth. The texture of boba with the cool spice of cardamom at the bottom of an iced chai. It's pretty fantastic.
    For those of you new to boba, they’re soft, chewy, tapioca balls that are a Taiwanese tradition that came about in the 1980s. They’re typically served with a strong tea, which is often sweetened and mixed with milk, to make what’s known as boba tea.
    Masala chai is (as you probably know, if you're reading a blog about chai), from India, and the combination of these two forces isn't traditional to either country. But you can now find them together in many boba tea shops across the US (and beyond?). 
    Disclaimer: nobody at Chico Chai invented boba or chai, but we're eternally grateful to those who did.
    RECIPE:
    Cardamom Syrup:
    Boil 1/2 cup water
    Add 1 T cardamom
    boil 5 mins
    Add 1/2 cup sugar
    Stir until dissolved
    Strain and set liquid aside

    Boba:
    Boil 4 cups water
    Add 1/2 cup boba
    Boil 4 mins
    Strain out boba
    Add boba to syrup
    Let soak 10 mins +

    Add cardamom boba to iced chai, iced oolong or any tea of your choice!

     

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  • DIY Chai Concentrate

    DIY Chai Concentrate

    As we're all in quarantine right now, we've had a ton of folks request a chai concentrate recipe from our loose leaf chai. Our favorite way to make chai is to boil it on the stovetop, a cup at a time, with milk & sugar. But a lot of folks who are home with kids, working long hours, etc, don't have time for that, and not everyone has access to our fresh concentrate. So we've adapted our chai concentrate recipe to a home version. Enjoy!

    1.25 quarts water
    1/3 cup loose leaf Chico Chai (Original, Red, Chocolate or Turmeric) 
    1/4 cup sugar

    Boil water in a pot on the stove. Add chai and simmer, covered for 30 minutes. Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Pour through a strainer into a heat-safe vessel (a one quart canning jar works great). Chill down vessel of chai by placing in an ice bath or cool water bath if possible. Store in fridge and keep for 1-2 weeks.
    Mix your concentrate 1:1 with milk/unmilk and heat or pour over ice as desired.

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