Homemade Boba Tea Made with Tapioca Flour

I have never had Boba Tea, but my students were raving about it and told me it was a recipe I had to try next. So...I did some research and tried to pull together all of the needed ingredients. I could not find tapioca pearls, so I had to make my own with tapioca flour. 

Ingredients for the tapioca pearls: 

3/4 cup tapioca flour

2 Tbsp dark brown sugar

4 Tbsp water

Ingredients for the brown sugar syrup:

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

3/4 cup water

Ingredients for black tea/milk drink

1/2 cup brewed black tea

1/2 cup almond or regular milk

Start by putting the 2 Tbsp brown sugar and 4 Tbsp water in a saucepan. Heat until sugar is dissolved. Add 1 Tbsp of the tapioca flour. Stir until it is thickened. Remove from the heat when it is thick. (This happens quickly) 

Add the remaining flour and stir. It will become a dough. Put the dough on a lightly tapioca floured surface. Knead the dough. It will be slightly sticky. I kneaded the dough for a couple of minutes. 

Cut the dough into four equal parts. Cover the parts you aren't working with with plastic wrap so they don't dry out. 

I rolled out one portion at a time into a long snake-like shape. I then pulled small pieces of dough off of the rolled dough. I turned each piece of dough into a small ball. You will have to use more tapioca flour to make sure the little dough balls don't stick to the counter or to each other. I rolled them around on the counter that was sprinkled with flour so they didn't stick to each other. The picture below shows the final amount of little tapioca pearls that I made with this amount of dough. 

Next, get a pan of water boiling. I used 8 cups of water. Put the pearls in the water and stir so they don't stick to the bottom. Cover and let boil for 20 minutes. Then turn off the heat, uncover, and let it sit there for another 20 minutes. 

While the pearls are sitting in the hot water, mix together 3/4 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup water in a saucepan. Cook it down until it reduces a little and becomes a thin syrup. Pour the syrup in a bowl and set aside. 

The pearls will become brown and translucent by the end of the 40 total minutes. Drain the pearls and add them to the brown sugar syrup. 

This is the pearl base that you can add to your drink combo.  Put some pearls and about 1/4 cup of the syrup in the bottom of a glass. To one drink, I added about 1/2 cup almond milk and 1/2 cup brewed black tea to the pearls. 

For another combination, I put 1 cup of strawberries, 1 cup of ice, 1 cup of almond milk, and 1 Tbsp honey in a blender. Mix up and add that to the boba pearl syrup. 

I liked the milk/tea combo the best, but those that don't normally drink tea liked the fruit drink better.