I have a trusty pumpkin bread that I make countless loaves of every year. My wife and I love Chai Tea and I was curious how one could go about adapting the linked recipe above to include Chai spices or some type of Chai tea as part of the ingredients. To me this seems like the best convergence of many tasty flavors for the fall.
Bread – How to modify a quick bread recipe to add spice / tea flavors
breadchaipumpkintea
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The way we make Chai in India ( there are lots of variants of the spice mix) is to use the spices whole while brewing the tea and to strain the tea before drinking.
Though for cardomom you should crush it to release the flavor. I would suggest using your hand or the broad side of your knife blade.
If you decide to use ginger, it might be a good idea to grate it to increase the surface area so that the flavor is absorbed quicker. (Ginger chai is really good in winter :))
The chai tea latte at Starbucks is made from the Tazo Chai Tea Latte concentrate. This product is available at supermarkets and online, and is mixed with milk to make a product not unlike what you have at Starbucks (minus the foam, as you pointed out).
So, what are these flavors (say, if you wanted to make this from scratch)? The website mentions that the black tea is malty. You could likely reproduce that with a maltier tea like Assam, though the box also says a "a rich blend of flavorful teas", meaning that a stronger blend like English Breakfast might be a closer match. It looks like you are on the right track with the spices as well: cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and cloves are all listed, though the website mentions black pepper, star anise, and vanilla in addition, which ought to lift your cup of chai a bit as well.
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Best Answer
I just noticed that your recipe uses water. That's an ideal way to get tea flavor into things - you can replace it with concentrated tea. Assuming you use teabags, you should be able to steep two in that 2/3 cup of water. Tea is a fairly subtle flavor, so you may not taste it too much in the bread, but this is easy and doable with what you have! There's also instant tea, if you want to try to boost it - but it of course won't be as good as real, fresh tea. (You could buy chai concentrate, but I think it's usually about double strength, so not really better than you'll do on your own.)
I'd then replace the spices normally in your recipe with chai spices. If you've ever made chai from scratch, you could use that recipe as a guide, but it sounds like you might not have. There's an awful lot of variety here, from region to region, and in Western variations; you could search around online for chai recipes that appeal to you. I'm not an expert (I'm from Texas!) but from what I know, here are some common spices, with the most standard ones toward the top:
Cardamom is pretty much required, and that'll help give you a flavor very different from your usual spice blend. I'd mix/grind up the spices separately from the rest, smell them to see if they're what you're looking for, and adjust as needed before mixing into the rest. Aiming for a similar total volume of spices to that of the original recipe should work fairly well. It might be a bit spicier, since you'll also have the tea, but that's probably fine. (Fresh ginger obviously won't go with the dry spices, if you use it - maybe a teaspoon or two minced?)