It all started with a trip to India and my desire to understand the complexities of the world of Masala Chai. Like everything in India, each region has its own flavour, its own way of doing things, its own unique approach. As a pastry chef, this fascinated me, the endless possibilities and combinations boggled my mind and set me on a journey to discover as much of India and its food culture as I could.

We started up north in Mumbai, sampling as much of the street chai as we could find and talking to the vendors to see how much info they would kindly part with. Then west to Gujarat and down south to Madurai where the chai experience was really quite different.

We then spent five days driving up to Chennai, stopping at every village we drove through that had a chai cart, tasting, asking questions, more tasting, you get the picture.

We then headed back to Australia where I gathered all my notes and started the chai trials to see which combination suited the type of couverture chocolate that I wanted to use. After much testing and tasting, I decided to base my recipe on our experience in the Gujarat region.

When you experience Chaicolate you will notice the first sip is all about the chocolate and then every sip after you will start to get the black pepper, then the ginger, then cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

It has been designed so the intensity of the flavours builds until the last drop. I know you will love the Chaicolate experience as much as I have enjoyed making it.