Skinny Chocolate Chai Latte | Amy's Healthy Baking (2024)

An easy, 4-ingredient recipe for a creamy chai latte with lots of rich dark chocolate flavor. Just 35 calories in this irresistible drink!

When my mom started working for a new foundation a few years ago, she began traveling much more frequently because of her job title. As the head of the science team, she writes grants for various scientific research projects, so she often hops on an airplane to visit her past and potential grantees to check in on their progress.

Although she occasionally travels to exotic places like Hawaii or Greenland, the majority of her trips stay within the US, generally taking her to Southern California, New England, and Washington, D.C. With how often she packs her suitcase, she easily accumulates thousands of frequent flier miles!

Earlier this month, she flew to Boston once and twice to Pasadena, all within a week and a half, and she barely spent a total of 72 hours at home in between her trips. In talking with her after each visit, her eyes shone with excitement as she shared stories about the people she met and the experiments they conducted.

But whether on the road or at home, Mom always starts her days the same way: jogging for a few miles, followed by a hot shower and a cozy chai latte. She established the final part of that routine over 10 years ago, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s skipped her favorite drink!

After all of her work travel, I wanted to do something special for my mom, and since I inherited my chocoholism from her (that’s why I wrote and published my Healthier Chocolate Treats cookbook!), I made her this Skinny Chocolate Chai Latte! It’s rich and creamy (and so easy to make!), but with only 35 calories, Mom can definitely enjoy it without any guilt after her morning run.

Like I mentioned, this cozy drink is super simple to make! You’ll start with chai. These are the chai tea bags that my mom and I both love. They’re full of the quintessential chai flavors—black tea, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and cloves—and are so much easier to brew than making your own chai entirely from scratch! Even better? They sell a decaf version too, which is perfect for when you’re craving something warm and comforting at night!

To ensure those flavors really shine, you’ll brew extra strong chai. Add two or three of those tea bags to boiling water, and let it steep for at least 15 minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

For the next part, you’ll use a secret ingredient to make the latte super rich and creamy without the extra calories from cream or whole milk. Any guesses?? I’ve talked about it before in my skinny peppermint mocha, skinny hot chocolate, and skinny pumpkin spice coffee creamer recipes (to name a few)…

It’s unsweetened cashew milk! I absolutely adore unsweetened cashew milk, and I actually buy it more often than cow’s milk! It’s supremely thick and creamy, but it only has 25 calories per cup. How amazing is that??

To the cashew milk, you’ll add unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla crème stevia. Stevia is a no-calorie, plant-based sweetener that’s clean eating friendly, and it’s highly concentrated. You need less than ¼ teaspoon to sweeten this entire latte! This is the kind that I buy because I love its warm vanilla flavor and don’t notice any strange aftertastes like with some other stevia products. You can find it at many health-oriented grocery stores, but I generally buy it online here because it’s cheaper there. (And you’ll use it in all of these recipes of mine, too!)