Dirty Chai Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

Have you ever had a dirty chai?  I never have but the idea of combining chai with coffee sounds great to me!  I bought a bag of whole coffee beans the other day and thought to myself, I could grind these up... or I could cover them in chocolate.  I made the right choice.  To make these chai flavored, I simply added some chai spices to the chocolate.  So there's no actual tea involved but I don't think you would be able to taste the tea in there with the strong spices and coffee

To coat these in chocolate by hand, it actually took me about 30 minutes working quickly.  I found it very fun and I think it would be a fun project to do with a friend (plus you could finish in half the time!)  But I understand many of you might not enjoy tedious cooking and just want to eat chocolate.  I can respect that.  In that case, you might prefer dropping a few coffee beans at a time onto waxed paper to make clusters or even just spreading the entire mixture onto a wax paper lined baking sheet to make "bark".

I really didn't realize how much caffeine you got from eating the whole coffee bean.  I read somewhere that about 10 beans have the same caffeine content as a cup of coffee.  Not sure if that's true but I was definitely feeling the caffeine after "taste testing" (pigging out) on these.  I also had 2 cups of coffee prior so that didn't help.

The entire time I was photographing this recipe, I had this song stuck in my head.  So appropriate for this recipe!  I'm sorry if it's stuck in your head now too.  But I linked to the song with the lyrics so you don't have to sing it with made up words like I did.

Recipe

Dirty Chai Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

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• Prep Time: 35 mins
• Cook Time: 15 mins
• Total Time: 50 mins
• Yield: 2 cups 1x

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Ingredients

• 1 ⅔ C dark chocolate chips (or chopped dark chocolate)
• 1 C whole roasted coffee beans
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp ginger
• ¼ tsp cardamom
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• ¼ tsp ground cloves

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Instructions

1. In a double boiler over medium-low heat, melt the chocolate. Remove from heat and stir in the spices.
2. Mix the coffee beans into the melted chocolate until the beans are evenly coated. Lay out a large sheet of waxed paper or parchment paper and drop each individual bean onto the paper as neatly as you can manage. Alternatively, you can drop a few beans at a time onto the paper to make clusters or line a large rimmed baking sheet with the paper and evenly spread the chocolate mixture over it. Allowing to dry and breaking it will make bark. These alternatives are quicker than doing individual beans.
3. Allow the beans to dry before removing from the waxed paper. Garnish with extra cinnamon, if desired and store leftovers in an airtight container.