Bubble Tea Cookies!

I know that this sounds really cheesy, but I had a dream in which I was making bubble tea cake. I remember considering the logistics of the cake - how would it stand? Where do the bubbles go? How much does it have to look like a container of bubble tea? Straw? Do the bubbles stay at the bottom or are they distributed evenly throughout the (tea) cake? I remember applying bright orange icing to a cake shaped like a bubble tea container in the dream; in fact, it looked like this, except it was standing vertically and lacked the bottom and top. The rest of the dream seemed to be slightly morose, but I don't remember. 

Note: Throughout this post, I will refer to these tapioca pearls/bubble tea bubbles as "tapioca pearls" for consistency.

It turns out that no one has yet BAKED a tapioca pearl cake (or at least, I REALLY hope no one has ever done it). So, it's a race against time: I need to bake tapioca pearls into some sort of attractive cake thing, and post it on here. It will be an original product. When some famous celebrity chef finally does it in the future, people will search for recipes. MINE WILL SHOW UP and I WILL BE KNOWN AS THE ONE WHO DID IT BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

But first, what happens when you bake tapioca pearls?  Do they shrivel up? Or, do they get hot and steamy? Swell up and go hard? Explode? Pop like cherries? (Okay, I'll stop the jokes...)

So, here's a pilot test!

First, I made some cookie dough. I made half a batch of this vegan recipe, but I substituted the baking powder and water with baking soda and balsamic vinegar. There are also no chocolate chips or marshmallows. I added the balsamic vinegar right before adding the tapioca pearls, because the vinegar reacts with the baking soda.

Rehydrating "5-minute" tapioca pearls! A few months ago, they were $1.68, but now they are $1.98 at the underground Chinese grocery store in Chinatown :(. Throughout the semester, I would do this by boiling water using the electric kettle, pouring this water into my loose tea leaves in a tea strainer, sugar, and pearls, and cover my mug with a lid. After stirring about every 3 minutes for 10 minutes or so, the pearls would be chewy and edible.

However, I think that the pearls taste much better and are plumper when heated in boiling sweet tea on the stove.

For heating these instant tapioca pearls, I used about 1/4 of a saucepan of water, a handful of tapioca pearls and a tablespoon of brown sugar. There wasn't any tea in this rehydration, but I did use the leftover sugar mixture for tea.

After the pearls were cooked, I fished them out with a tea strainer and plonked them into the cookie dough. Leaving them in hot water for too long renders the whole pearl to taste uniform and starchy (well, it happened once, and I do not want to risk it happening again). After a quick mix, I scooped out the dough and baked the cookies according to that recipe. The mixture was really crumbly (think sand-like), so what I did was scoop up a tablespoon, squeeze my hand against the spoon, and keep squeezing until a ball was formed. The dough was kind of spongy.

AND THEY WORKED! They harden as they cool, so I ended up with crispy (but delicious) cookies that were devoured by my friends and SP. SP ate 5/12ths of the batch (of 12 cookies). The cookie recipe produced cookies that remind me of the almond cookies, like these, I used to get for 2 HKD  in HK near my piano exam place.
The tapioca pearls were chewy, not dry, and delicious! So, I will make a cake next time!

On the 18th day of the 6th month of the 2012th year of our wholesome flying spaghetti monster, I, PIE-314, OFFICIALLY MADE THE FIRST TAPIOCA PEARL COOKIES. EVER.

Study Break!

In my dorm house, every Wednesday from 10:30pm to whenever is study break. Every week, a dorm room gets $40 to spend on sundry food for 25, 50, or 107 people. Yesterday was my roommate TJ and my turn, and we wanted to do something spectacular! The make-your-own sundae thing has been done too many times,  chips were too trite (but we bought 2 packs anyway)...so what could we do!?

TJ came up with the idea. Bubble tea.

So, despite the fact that I had a proof to do for maths, I ran to Chinatown, met TJ there (she took SEPTA), bought 6 packs (so, 1.5 kilos) of tapioca pearls, 1 tin of green tea and 1 tin of black tea. I didn't want to use tea bags due to environmental reasons, and I think that the loose tea leaves added a more "authentic" effect to the tea while people were scooping it up, which is always nice even though I'm sure that authentic tea doesn't mean ladling tea out of a giant saucepan.

We then bought 4 lbs of sugar (even though sugar generally comes in 5-lb packages) and 2 gallons of whole-fat milk. I know that sweetened condensed milk might've been better, but that would've meant that we'd have to add the milk into the tea, which would have been really confusing since:

1. How much tea did we need?

2. What if people are lactose intolerant?

I used this recipe as a guideline although I don't really think that I should even cite it because I didn't follow it since it is really difficult mixing ratios of tea leaves:sugar:water:milk when people are crowding around you.

Note that I used my own bag. NO PLASTIC BAGS!!

Miraculously, the tapioca pearls were quick-cooking, which is SURPRISING because last time, for the same price ($1.68) at Kamman, I bought tapioca pearls that took hours to cook. This time, the bubbles floated up to the top in 5 minutes. Less than 5 minutes.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? I'M NEVER BUYING $3 BUBBLE TEA AGAIN! (Well, perhaps in the company of friends) $1.68 can yield me so much more bubble tea in 5 minutes (whereas walking to a bubble tea store, ordering, paying etc. takes more time than that, and it also wastes plastic).

We bought two types of tapioca pearls: coloured ones and the typical black ones. They don't taste different, and I find it bizarre that most stores sell the black ones since the rainbow ones are quite pretty; I guess it's just tradition. Unfortunately, 1.5 kilos of bubbles (purported to serve around 40 people?) was not enough to serve my dorm house (and a few people from other college houses who came because I made study break the subject of a Facebook status and I'm currently kicking myself for doing that *insert selfish angry rant*). TJ also bought bubble tea straws from a bubble tea store nearby, although I was against it (plastic waste) but I agree that it made it more "authentic".

We had a huge problem because we had three spoons, an electric kettle, one saucepan, and one giant saucepan (I borrowed the saucepans). I also had a pie pan and a glass bowl (in which we put the tapioca). We also obtained a ladle, a colander and a vegetable-washing bowl. The main issue was making enough tea to please everyone. We made enough tea to fill the two pots, brought those downstairs, and decided to wait until study break to make refills.

People ladle tea at the speed of sound. Really. Luckily, two friends lent me their kettles (and we promptly ran out of electrical outlets), and we started doing this boil-water-pour-water-refill-throw-in-sugar-throw-in-tea-stir-serve!-serve!-serve!  while attempting to communicate and transport kettles and saucepans back and forth. Meanwhile, a mob (a.k.a people in my dorm house + intruders) was scooping up tapioca pearls, sloshing out milk, chattering happily, and complimenting us. Yay!

The House Dean said that this certainly hadn't been done before. :) I must say it was a chaotic success.

An hour later, the crowd has dispersed, the bystanders were trampling stray bubbles on the carpet or sitting on the sticky-tapioca-studded tables, and TJ and I were packing up. We went to the kitchen and had a nice laugh and evaluation of the event while we picked out tapioca from the leftover 2 L of sweet Chinese tea and  tea leaves (There were a LOT of tea leaves) and drank tea. I note that this is something I won't forget, and I can't wait to make 5-minute bubble tea again!

I will definitely take better photos in the future. I really wish that I had the time while shuttling hot water around to shoot the crowd - I mean, shoot pictures of the crowd.

Beijing Restaurant (大学城)

When my dad was driving me here to my internship, we passed by Beijing At Penn, an American-Chinese restaurant. My dad said, "这里有个大学城！" which translates into "There's a University City here!"

So, for the first time, I shifted my gaze away from the neon "Beijing" at the window, and read the Chinese characters beside it. "大学城". "University City".

Apart from the fact that the name in English and Chinese are inconsistent, the cuisine is also American-Chinese-Taiwan. First, of course it's mixed to tingle "American" taste buds. It's situated at Penn! In America! People don't want authentic Chinese restaurants here! (Authentic = Chinatown, for sure). However, the hint of Taiwan is the bubble tea.

When TBowl opened next door and started selling bubble tea for some $3+, Beijing suddenly decided that they also sold bubble tea, for $2.15 (tax is 15c). This is pretty shocking to me, because in NY, bubble tea is at least $2.50, and if you want a cool flavour, you'd better have at least $3.50 with you! The fact that Beijing sells bubble tea cheaper than Chinatown in NY definitely means that something is up.

Today, I asked the friendly waitstaff for a mango bubble tea.

The best part was that the bubbles were perfectly cooked; they were soft and slimy on the outside (pardon the negative connotation of "slimy", but that's how I would compliment them. Yes, I mean this positively), and chewy and gelatinous in the center. I also liked that there wasn't too much ice.

I suppose the problem with this flavour is that it's not real mango, and there is no real tea. It's mango flavouring, and it tastes a bit like mango, but there is no mango pulp and no tea-like bitterness. The flavour is shallow and extremely sweet. In other words, the bubble tea is just a bubble drink, akin to drinking soda or MinuteMaid pink lemonade with tapioca (hmmm I wonder if anyone's tried sparkling water + real milk tea + tapioca?!!??!?! Sounds amazing!!). As S said (who I met today at the PennMoves sale), there's no real tea taste in Beijing's bubble "tea".

I think that I like this cheaper version of bubble tea though, and as I've yet to try the milk tea and thai tea flavoured ones (along with the other flavours) I can't really judge Beijing. I'm still pretty happy that it was only $2.15!!

Beijing Restaurant (大学城), 37th & Spruce St. Philadelphia

Quiz Bowl - 18th!

I'm getting sick of posting about stuff that happened daysss ago.

This is the last one. I am finally up to date. Sort of.

On the 18th, I went to my first Quiz Bowl tournament at Newark, DE. It was amazing, even though I only buzzed in on two toss-ups. Out of 200. Yeah, 2/200. I guess I'll keep you all updated on how much I suck at Quiz Bowl, so you can all laugh at me :). I did get some bonuses though, which was nice. The best two bonuses that I got were the lac operon, and iodine [the clue had to do with thyroids... and I consider myself quite knowledgeable about thyroids now. I think.]

We had lunch at California Tortilla, which according to C doesn't exist where she lives... which is in California. I find this pretty amusing. The burrito had more vegetables than Chipotle's burritos. California Tortilla tends to be really cheesy. I mean this figuratively... not literally. I suppose it all evens out, since the burritos aren't cheesy enough. There were all these cheesy remarks posted everywhere on the walls.

There was a Wall of Flame [see image] with a zillion bottles of spicy sauce. I have never seen such detail in my life for spicy sauce. For wine, yeah, and for oil, yeah, but not spicy sauce. I tried some [not-too-spicy] chipotle sauce, which was actually sweet and spicy, and a tad sour. Quite delicious.

Do you see vegetables [that aren't pieces of shredded lettuce?! I DO!!]?!

After the tournament, four of us went to Tlicious [Newark, Delaware is extremely cheesy. One store was called "Lettuce Feed You", and they sold wraps. I'm telling you. This is cutesy cheesy campus. Which is pretty cool.]

I hate choosing a bubble tea flavour because they're all so delicious!

COCONUT BUBBLE TEA ROCKS...

We four ended up cramming in the back of a [small] car, sans seatbelts, for the drive home. The other four had to cram into the back of the other car, since they had missed the train. At least we had bubble tea :) and the game Contact [and trust me to use the word "rutabaga"].

Bubble Milk!

Known as bubble tea, pearl milk tea, or chewy-tapioca-balls-with-tea, this drink is ubiquitous in any Chinatown in the U.S. However, they usually cost from $2.50 to $5 [or more], and one rarely obtains enough tapioca in the tea to fulfill one's sticky tapioca craving.

Well, at least, for me, I always end up consuming all the tapioca balls before half the tea is done. Usually, there is also a ton of ice which acts as a filler. Although I love the fact that there are so many exotic flavours [taro, coconut, various flowers, etc.] at bubble tea specialty stores, it's also pretty awesome making my own, sans too much sugar to give me a headache.

At Kamman, we bought some tapioca balls [labelled as "starch balls"] for $1.69. My mum stuck them on the stove today for an hour or so, with a ton of water, and now we have plenty of tapioca balls for me to put into milk, decaf coffee, tea, grape juice... etc.

I just made some bubble milk, and half the volume of my mug was filled with tapioca. I'm happy.