Homemade Bubble Tea

Bubble tea is very popular to Asian invented in Taiwan, it is one of my favourite drink. To me though, bubble tea is timeless because I drank it when I was young.  I never realized how strong my addiction was until I moved to UK, there were always a shop that you can buy bubble tea round the comer when I was in HK, I can't be bothered to go all the way to china town to have a glass of bubble tea, so I decided to make my own bubble tea.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup pearl tapioca

250cc of black tea

a little bit of honey

30cc of sugar syrup (recipe below)

2 tablespoons of milk

1 cup ice cubes

1 tablespoons of condensed milk (optional)

Sugar Syrup: Boil one cup of water, then mix in 1/2 cup of white granulated sugar and 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Stir until the water syrup boils again, then turn off. You only need a few spoonfuls per drink (to your taste), then refrigerate the rest.

To cook the tapioca:

1.Fill a pot with water ( water:tapioca, 10:1) and bring to a boil.

2. Pour the tapioca pearls in the water. Bring back to a boil. Turn the the heat to low and boil, covered. Cook

for 30 min., stirring occasionally to prevent the tapioca from sticking. At this point, they should be halfway

done.

3. Turn off the heat and let the tapioca sit for another 10 min., covered. 

4. Soak them in cold water to prevent further cooking. After a couple minutes, the tapioca should be

completely cool. Drain the tapioca through a colander.

5. Coat the tapioca with sugar syrup.

Fill the bottom of a tall glass with tapioca balls. Add about 2 tablespoons of sugar syrup. Add tea to about 1/3 of the remaining space in the glass. Add about 1 tablespoon of condensed milk (optional). Fill the rest of the glass with milk. Mix and taste. Add more tea, sugar syrup, and/or condensed milk to taste.