Tapioca pearls

Tapioca pearls
Originally uploaded by love_yellow

When I picked up the little 6-ounce box of tapioca I didn't believe it actually made 17 servings as it said on the box. I had 11 people for dinner and I wanted to make sure to have enough so I bought 3 boxes, just in case. I hate running out to get last minute ingredients, especially during holiday season. Well sure enough the one little 6-ounce box did indeed make MANY servings.

The recipe on the back of this box called for coconut milk (rather than regular milk, I used light coconut milk) which I was happy about because I was planning to top it with some Asian fruit. I used turbinado sugar (instead of granulated white sugar), which gave it a nice flavor.

The only thing I would change on the recipe is to decrease the water. Too much water made the consistency more soupy than I was expecting. I wanted a pudding-like texture, so next time I'm going to add only 1/2 or 3/4 of the water. Luckily I had a tapioca powder (by the same company) so it was easy to thicken with that. But I had to wait until it was half cooled before I can determine what the final consistency was going to be, never having made tapioca before. So I had to re-heat the soup to add the thickener - reheating something always makes me nervous because you never know what's going to happen.

So now I know how to work with tapioca and I'm looking forward to making it again.