Tapioca Pudding

Have you ever prepared food you knew you couldn’t stomach only because you want to pamper the person you adore? You shouldn’t make yourself retch to prove your love, but  I have a problem as a compulsive feeder.

I soaked 1/2 cup of tapioca pearls in about two cups of water with the view to making Tapioca pudding . Then, genius struck me, and I thought, “Hey, let’s make Bubble Tea too!” (Later, much later, we’ll talk about how I boiled that until it was clear, and then couldn’t touch it because I was gagging and it looked like fish eggs!) 

Then, the genius I am decided to double the recipe, soaking one entire cup of pearls overnight as well. Doubling the recipe meant using a half-gallon of milk, six eggs, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and almost about three times the 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla. 

I was putting off for tomorrow what I’d be too tired to do, and I knew it. When the reckoning came, I had to stand at the stove for an hour, stirring, stirring, stirring, and feeling entirely sad for the witches at the beginning of MacBeth, who must have been stirring tapioca.

They didn’t know they’d end up with a gallon of the stuff. Perhaps their witchy friends were coming over to share. Here’s the regular recipe:

Tapioca Pudding with Large Pearl Tapioca

Ingredients

½ cup Large Tapioca Pearls

2 cups of Water

2 quarts Milk separated

1 ½  cups Sugar separated

3 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

Soak tapioca pearls overnight in water

Next day: Drain. Don’t rinse.

In a large saucepan, mix one quart milk and ¾ cup of sugar and slowly bring to a boil. Stir often.

Add tapioca and stir frequently  over medium heat for about 1/2 hour until tapioca is clear.

In a separate container, beat eggs, add remaining 3/4 cup sugar and vanilla. Mix completely, and add to the tapioca once it has boiled. Add it to the remaining one quart milk and stir in.

Stir often for about another half hour until the tapioca has come to a full boil, which means it keeps boiling while you’re still stirring. Remove it from the heat and let it cool a bit before refrigerating in airtight containers.

You can vary this by using plant milks, adding nutmeg or cinnamon or different flavorings. Some use water and gelatin and then add fruit, but I’ve never done this.