It's refreshing. It's chewy. It's happiness in a cup.
Bubble tea is definitely one of my guilty pleasures and my addiction is what later drove me to get a job in one of the local bubble tea stores. As someone that is both a long-time lover and regular creator of the iconic drink, I wanted to try making the entire dessert from scratch, but with a twist. Rather than sticking with roasted brown sugar pearls, I wanted to indulge my eccentric sweet tooth with a honey roasted tapioca dessert instead.
THE PROCESS
INSPIRATION RECIPE: https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/how-to-make-boba-pearls-at-home/
As a total newbie to creating homemade tapioca, I decided to get some help from China Sichuan Food - an incredible cooking blog centered around Chinese cuisine and eating culture hosted by Elaine Guo. In their recipe, they had pretty simple steps and additional suggestions to make an easy-to-understand guide to tapioca-making mastery.
Unfortunately, I ran into some trouble in creating the tapioca dough, with 2 batches becoming an oobleck mess that was impossible to knead and form. This issue was caused by high temperatures making all the ingredients harder to combine. So to offset this issue, I decided to revise the recipe into what we see below.
THE RESULTS
So as you saw in the video, the pearls did not end up looking like pearls at all. At best, they were cubes or "soft pillows" of tapioca. Luckily on the visual side, it still looked like a pretty decent bubble tea at the very end of the process. Taste-wise, honey roasted bubble tea is incredible, as it gives a subtle sweet taste that is meant to not overwhelm your taste buds.
Process-wise, tapioca making is a lot harder than I realized and it made me really thankful that pre-made tapioca balls still exist in this world.
THE VERDICT
Despite the decent look and taste at the end, I would still rate this as a HUGE ERROR on my part. I think the boba is the central part of the drink and if it doesn't look and feel entirely like "proper boba" it's not real bubble tea. Looking back on my process, I would recommend the following:
PRE MIX YOU DOUGH: Even though Elaine mentioned not to do so, I found that premixing your dough, similar to how we created mochi last time, is the best way to make sure it incorporates properly. It's okay if it looks too watery in the beginning, the heat should reduce the water over time.
COOL OFF: Use the lowest heat as possible (low to med-low). It will take a lot longer for your pre-mixture to heat up, but it will ensure that you get the right doughy texture without drying out the substance or overheating it.
However, I would recommend anyone and everyone to try it out and test out their results. Boba-making is a lot more fun than expected and it takes away the guilt from indulging in "too many" bubble teas.
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