Guiltless Thai Iced Tea

Enjoy the popular sweet and spicy tea without all of the sugar, dairy, artificial coloring, or caffeine!

#tea #soyfree #gf #vegan

Thai iced tea is a delicious beverage typically made with strongly brewed black tea, spices, sugar, yellow food coloring, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk. Clearly, a few things had to change to make this loaded drink into a guiltless one.

To start, I opted for decaf black tea in order to maintain the strong black tea flavor, but avoid all of the caffeine. Then infuse this tea with the spices, sweeten it with stevia, top it with unsweetened almond milk, and voila, you have a lightened up version that can be enjoyed any time of the day. I first made this for a boba party we hosted, and it was a hit!

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup water

1 small cinnamon stick

2 cardamom pods

2 cloves

1 star anise

4 decaf black tea bags

¼ teaspoon almond extract

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons almond milk, plus more to pour in each glass

6-8 drops liquid stevia (or sweetener of choice)

Option: For a richer version, add 1-2 tablespoons coconut sweetened condensed milk while the tea is hot and reduce the sweetener by half

Directions:

1. In a small sauce pan, bring water to a boil. Add in the cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, and star anise and boil for about 30 – 60 seconds or until fragrant. Turn off the stove and add the tea bags, almond extract, and vanilla extract and steep for 5 minutes.

2. Pour the tea through a strainer to remove the tea bags and spices and stir in the almond milk and stevia and mix until thoroughly combined and creamy. Allow the tea to cool a bit before pouring over ice and topping with a little more almond milk.