This recipe is an example of how failure is not a set-back, it is an inspiration to something awesome.
A few days ago, I tried to make a dairy-free chai ice cream. It wasn't very good ice cream: it didn't churn or freeze well. It was too light and airy and way too liquid when I scooped it out of the churn. It froze very hard, melted very quickly, and had a flaky sort of texture upon scooping. But it tasted good!
This morning, as I was grinding the daily coffee beans, I realized I had neither made almond milk yesterday, nor set any almond to soaking to make milk today. I just wasn't in the mood for espresso. That's an after-dinner coffee for me; lattes are my breakfast drink. I remember the too-melty, yummy-tasting ice cream. Maybe I could just use that like milk. Or frozen milk-like stuff.
I dumped my two shots of espresso into my Vitamix and dug out the ice cream. I loaded up the blender and cranked it up to warp speed until everything was all thick and smooth. Poured into my favorite cold drink cup, topped with a scoop of the frozen chai, this frappe-style frozen dirty chai latte was an amazing start to the day.
Of course, all the churning and freezing and scooping now seems like a lot of extra work on top of the already (slightly) labor-intensive effort to make the base. Next time I try this, instead of attempting to churn it like ice cream, I will simply pour the base into ice cube trays. And probably in a larger quantity since this recipe wont make a terrible lot of frozen lattes. And if I were really smart, I'd freeze some espresso ice cubes to use instead of hot espresso for an even thicker and freezy-er drink.
But, here's how I made the ice cream base:
Soak 1 cup of raw unsalted Almonds in a pint of filtered water for several hours or overnight. Strain, rinse, and add to the Vitamix.
Brew three bags of Tazo Chai tea in a pint of filtered water. Make it strong. Remove the tea bags and open them, add the contents of the used tea bags into the Vitamix.
Add 1/4-1/2 teaspoon kosher, sea, or pink salt. Sweeten to taste with preferred sweetener. I used 1/4 cup coconut sugar.
Add the pint of tea to the Vitamix. Cover and blend on top speed for 2 minutes (use a timer, it seems much longer than it is).
Pour the thick mess through a milk bag (I use paint strainers from the hardware store) over a strainer. Squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible. Retain the chai-flavored almond pulp for another purpose (I'm still working on a biscotti recipe).
The strained chai almond milk is now ready for freezing. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze until solid or overnight. Add chai cubes with fresh brewed espresso or expresso ice cubes to the Vitamix and whiz it up into a frappe-style dirty chai latte.
You can, of course, buy ready-made chai concentrate just like they use at Starbucks but it is pre-sweetened and I find it just nasty sweet, I wouldn't even order this drink there when I was drinking milk.
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