Chai Latte used to be my guilty pleasure. I’d drink it everywhere and anywhere. Until I found out how strongly sugar influences my hormonal acne. Bummer! Since then I’ve been sticking with a low GI diet (well, mostly) and my beloved Chai Latte was a thing of the past.
But then I found out how to make a super quick and easy low carb Chai Tea Latte at home. It took some time and a little testing, but now have a low carb, sugar-free Chai Tea Latte recipe I am ready to share with you. I hope you enjoy it!
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Disclosure: Some of the links below are so-called provision links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
How to make your own Chai Spice Mix
First, you’ll make the spice mix. It’s the most important thing in the recipe, after all! So get into your spice shelf and collect all that spicy, warming goodness!
What you need for your low carb chai tea mix
You’ll need quite a few spices for this mix. For that reason, I decided to use powdered and ground instead of fresh ones. This way, I can even prepare a bigger batch and store it in an airtight container. But I am jumping ahead.
These are the ingredients you’ll collect for your very own homemade sugar-free chai tea mix:
- 1/4 tsp ground cardamom (buy ground here* or grind some yourself)
- 1 1/4 tsp of ground ginger (order here* or use a 1-inch piece of fresh ginger)
- 1 tsp of ground cinnamon (but make sure it’s Ceylon* and not Cassia!)
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 2 ½ tsp of ground cloves*
- 1 tsp vanilla powder*
Be very careful when buying vanilla powder. There are many offers, like this one*, labeled as “Pure Vanilla powder”, when in reality it is vanilla sugar. Definitely NOT low carb.
For our sugar free chai latte recipe we need the real vanilla. If you can’t find powdered vanilla without sugar like this one*, I recommend simply getting vanilla beans* and scraping them out yourself.
Later on, you’ll also need the following ingredients, so make sure you have these handy as well:
- 8 tea bags or 1/2 cup loose black tea or herbal tea
- up to 6 cups of plant milk of choice (see below!)
- 6 cups of water
Using this much will leave you with a pitcher full of spicy chai, which then you can top off with the milk. Enough for the whole family, basically!
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Which low carb milk can you use?
If you’ve been on a low carb or even keto diet, you’ll know that whole milk is not low carb. In order to get a low carb chai latte, you can pick any of the following plant milk, in their unsweetened version.
- Coconut Milk: 1 gram of carbohydrate
- Almond Milk: 2 grams of carbohydrate
- Flax Milk: 1 gram of carbohydrate
- Hemp Milk: 1 gram of carbohydrate
- Cashew Milk: 1 gram of carbohydrate
How to make your homemade low carb chai latte
Alright, now that you got all your spices, let’s get to work.
- Mix all of your spices together.
- Put the chai spice mix in a wide pot with the water. I like to leave the spices in a tea infuser like this one*, to make straining easier. This is especially important if you go for fresh ingredients instead of powder.
- Bring the mix to a boil and let it simmer at medium heat for about 5 minutes.
- Now add your teabags and brew it as long as you usually do with your black tea. Preferences can vary wildly here, as I learned when I saw how my husband makes tea… I would never sleep again if I did it like him. But to each their own.
- Then you can fill your tea into a pitcher. I like to strain the mix again at this point to make sure I don’t get spice pieces in my chai latte later.
- Fill a cup with half chai, half plant milk. To get a nice, hot chai latte, you might want to warm up the milk before! And because this recipe comes without any sweetener, you might want to vary the levels of milk. But don’t go below 50/50! I tried.
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Storing your homemade low carb chai
You can store the chai in the fridge for up to a week. But, a solution I like even better, is to freeze it in cubes and just quickly make myself a hot cup in the microwave when I feel like it. Because sometimes you just quickly need a Chai Tea Latte quickly, without the wait!
Alright, that’s it! Pin this for later, share it, and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
*These links are so-called provision links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
