When Janis of Terra Cottage reached out and asked if I wanted to try some North Fork Chai Co. Chai Concentrate, I was intrigued. I love Chai flavors, but have only ever had it as a warm beverage, and just never pursued the opportunity to explore it further. With a new (to me) ingredient to work with, I read up online about how people used Chai concentrate, and there are a gazillions ways people are being creative with it. Here are my two most favorite ways to use Chai Concentrate: 

1. As an iced coffee beverage: 3 TBSP original coffee mate powder, 1 shot espresso (hot and fresh), 4 tsp of the North Fork Chai Concentratev + ice to taste
2. As cake. (to enjoy with black coffee… such as Brewedmond’s Cold Brew)

Today, I’m sharing the recipe I use for our Chai Crumb Cake. 

This recipe has 3 parts: 

1. Cake
2. Crumble
3. Glaze

You’ll need a stand mixer or hand mixer for this recipe, a big mixing bowl, spatula, and pans… You have some choices when it comes to the pan..

Due to my vanity, I own THIS pan which I absolutely adore for so many of my other baking projects. 

I baked the cake in this pan PRIOR to filming the video as a trial run with HALF the recipe and it seemed scant. So I doubled the recipe and it’s a bit too much for this pan. So you’ve got options here– half the recipe to keep the size manageable, OR buy a bigger pan like a standard 9×13 pan like THIS.  And if you don’t mind the cake expanding a bit, be like me, and use this partition pan I have (and love). 

Chai Crumb Cake – Ingredients:

Crumb Topping:

• ½ cup tightly packed dark brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp each: salt, allspice, ginger, cardamom
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• 1 stick (4 oz) salted butter
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour

Cake:

• 2.25 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1.5 sticks salted butter (6 oz) at room temp
• 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cups dark brown sugar
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs at room temperature)
• 7 oz North Fork Chai Co. Chai Concentrate
• 1 oz unsweetened, non-dairy creamer

(You can also sub the chai concentrate for something you find at the grocery store which already had creamer blended in, 1 cup total “chai latte” ingredients) 

Glaze – eyeball it!

• Chai concentrate and creamer (2-3 tbsp) 
• 2-3 cups of powdered sugar to get desired consistency 

I’m not even creating a separate direction section for this. Mix these two things together with a rubber spatula, dump it into a piping bag for easy application, but honestly, you don’t have to. 

Make sure to watch the video on my method… and how I overdid the batter in the smaller pan, haha. 

Method:

1. Make your Crumb Topping
   1. Place your butter in a microwave-safe bowl that you know is big enough for the rest of your crumble ingredients!!! Because.. We’re gonna be adding everything into that bowl eventually. But first, melt your butter in that bowl and let cool a few minutes.
   2. Mix your vanilla, sugars, and spices into your melted butter
   3. Add flour in at once, mix to combine, set aside while you make your cake batter
2. Make your Cake
   1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F — make sure you use an oven thermometer, most home ovens are off by 25-50 degrees! You’ll want to play with the temp with you use convection, I got no experience there :X 
   2. Cream your butter and sugars until relatively smooth
   3. Add eggs and vanilla, mix, then add in chai concentrate/creamer, beat, it’ll look kinda chunky and that’s OK– just get it relatively combined
   4. Add in dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda & powder), mix until just combined. I got most of it done with an electric mixer and finished off the rest by hand.
   5. Pour into a greased pan
   6. Sprinkle the crumble generously all over the top!! (If you want. You can also mix some of this into the batter! 
   7. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out relatively clean
   8. Take out, let cool for 20-30 minutes in the pan, slice if desired and drizzle on the glaze

Chai Crumb Cake – DONE!

I really hope you try this– would love to hear your feedback below! So far, I’ve got thumbs up from all taste testers… all who have paired this with coffee are now addicted. 

I’m also in the process of developing this into a cut-out cookie– I think it’d be a perfect spicy holiday flavor– would you be interested?