tapioca pudding with coconut milk

I tried tapioca pudding in the USA for the first time this year. It came with the most delicious Thai takeout I have had in a while. So if your happen to be around Guilford, CT, try out SomSiam! Actually, we got desserts by surprise and for free,  since the my bfs charming brother has made an impression on the lady who owns the place in the past. So there they were: little tapioca puddings with sweet corn, black beans and coconut milk. Odd at first, they made an impression on me after the second bite.  And once back in Germany weeks later I had to run to the store to get tapioca pearls. Which I did.  I came across 101cookbooks and thought I may try a variation of her tapioca pudding. A lighter version, including the coconut touch I liked so much. So I reduced the number of egg yolks (I will try an egg-free version soon), used skimmed milk and muscovado sugar for a caramel touch. And finally, a tablespoon of coconut  milk adds that little twist (at least I think so).

You will need to be careful with the cooking time, as it will vary depending on the tyoe of tapioca you use. Thus, please only use the numbers here as rough guidelines, yours may need seriously longer or shorter.

Yield: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: ~20 minutes

Ingredients:

• ⅓ cup tapioca pearls
• 3 cups skimmed milk
• 1 egg yolk
• ⅓ cup muscovado sugar
• ½ vanilla bean
• ¼ tsp fine grain sea salt
• coconut milk, to taste

Directions:

Pour tapioca pearls into a thick-bottomed pot and cover with milk. Let soak for about 20 minutes. In the meantime scrape the vanilla bean. Add egg yolk, muscovado sugar, scraped vanilla and the vanilla bean to the soaked tapioca pearls. Whisk until all is mixed. Bring to a boil, stirring regularly. Once at a boil, let boil – while constantly stirring – for about a minute. Then reduce to a simmer. Let simmer – while regularly stirring – until the pudding is done.

This may take different amounts of time, depending on your tapioca pearls. The ones I used took about 15 minutes. The pudding is done when the tapioca pearls have increased in size and are almost completely translucent with a little white center. The longer you simmer the pudding, the thicker it gets. You may want to choose when to remove it from the heat. I removed this one while it was still of a somewhat creamy consistence.

Fill into bowls and let cool a bit. Then add 1 tbsp coconut milk and enjoy this heavenly dessert. This is best when it is still warm. The recipe yields about 4 small dessert potions – you may want to double the recipe as you may experience as happy customers as I did.

Note: I will try the same recipe without the egg yolk next time to see whether the egg-free version will work out as good.

Source: inspired by  101cookbooks

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