Homemade Bubble Tea (Boba Tea)

My first attempt at making the tapioca pearls commonly found in bubble tea was a SUCCESS! The texture was just like the ones you get outside. Except mine weren’t black in color. I think you can achieve that by adding some food coloring.
Okay, so I checked out two recipes online, one here and the other over on this site. I didn’t really measure the ingredients out or use sugar syrup.

What You’ll Need:
● Tapioca Flour
● Boiling Water
● Powdered Sugar(not compulsory)

Here’s what I did:

I used a sizable amount of tapioca flour. I just eyeballed it, enough to make a dough the size of my fist.

Because I didn’t want to go through the messy process of using sugar syrup, I though I would add powdered sugar to the tapioca flour. I noticed that the ready-made, dried tapioca pearls that they sell outside had ‘Aspartame’ (a synthetic sugar processed with the help of alcohol) so I thought, Why not use powdered sugar? I didn’t have icing sugar, so I powdered caster sugar using the coffee grinder. And it worked!

After incorporating sugar into the flour, I then boiled some water and proceeded to mix it into the flour mixture bit by bit. Both recipes that I linked in my post specifically stated that the water has to be boiling. So make sure you do that. Once the mixture starts forming into a dough, knead it until it’s nicely formed like the above picture. You can dust some tapioca flour whenever it gets sticky.

I then took a small bit of dough, rolled it into a long, thin log, cut it into the size of a tapioca pearl and then rolled it in my hands to make it round. I didn’t need to use parchment paper as the pearls seemed to not stick to eachother. Let them dry for about 10 minutes atleast, before the next step.

Then I heated some water until it was boiling and added the pearls in. Just like the recipe on Instructables said, they floated to the top. I like my tapioca pearls not too chewy and not too soft, so the whole process didn’t take long. The longer you boil them, the softer they get. Mine probably took just 2-3 minutes.

After that, I fished out the pearls and put them in cold water for a minute. And that was it! Homemade Tapioca Pearls!

I added mine to cold milk tea and they kind of took on a slightly beige color. It looks darker in this image than it really is. You can add yours to your personal choice of drink. I had some leftover pearls, so I stored it in cold water in the fridge. The next day, it got starchy(the texture) so I reheated them a bit and they returned to their chewy texture(only a little softer). So maybe you should just make enough for what you’ll need. Mine served around 8 people in all.

I found the whole procedure pretty easy, the only tedious part was rolling the tiny dough balls. If you ever try making tapioca pearls yourself, be sure to tell me how it turned out!

A/N – This is more of a personal attempt/recipe post. I’d also like to add that I had the help of my two sisters. (So there, Yasmin & Ariel! Don’t you ever come and accuse me of not crediting you! 😝)

“A day can make all the difference between winning or losing.”