What Tea Bags Should I Use For Chai Muffins?

Our answer

Chai tea is black tea that is mixed with a variety of spices, including cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Nigella's Chai Muffins (from SIMPLY NIGELLA) take these flavours by mixing the contents of two tea bags with almond milk. Most tea bags have fairly fine particles of tea leaves (sometimes called "fannings") and the chai ones usually have ground spices. So you will not particularly notice big pieces of tea leaves or spices in the baked muffins. We would suggest using a fairly standard paper-type teabag, such as Twinings or most of the supermarket own label bags. However for this recipe avoid the upmarket teabags that use a net pouch, as the net pouches usually have whole leaf tea.

If you would prefer not to use the whole interior of the tea bags then you could leave the tea bags in the milk to infuse for 15 minutes, or overnight, then squeeze the teabags out as hard as you can (without breaking them) before using the almond milk. With this method the flavour of the chai tea will, inevitably, be more subtle.