Tapioca Pudding

Whenever I order bubble tea, my son makes me filter out the tapioca pearls in there so he can eat them. He just loves them. I don't have easy access to those big tapioca pearls, so I thought why not buy the tiny ones and make some tapioca pudding for him.

Now, all the pudding recipes I looked at had eggs in them, but I wanted to make an eggless version. Whenever I look for eggless cake recipes, people usually use condensed milk to make them. So, I decided to do the same for this pudding as well. I just adjusted the quantity of milk used accordingly and completely did away with sugar as I used sweetened condensed milk.

As far as flavors go,  I did add some cardamom powder as that is a standard spice used when making the similar Indian version of this pudding - Sabudana Kheer! I thought a little  saffron would team up beautifully with the cardamom. But ofcourse I couldn't  just stop myself there. I thought about what else I could add. All the standard pudding recipes had vanilla essence, so I added a bit of that as well. Then I remembered that I had some coconut pineapple ice cream in my freezer. Coconut would definitely blend in with all the other flavors and pineapple would add a nice touch - so thats it, I added a scoop of the ice cream as well!

The end result was this gooey delicious mouthful of flavors that I simply loved! Well, the little one whom I actually made it for decided he did not want to eat it. "Amma, I want the big brown chewy pearls - not this!" was his explanation for not trying it! All I said was, his loss, my gain. Of course I'll be hunting a chinese grocery store close by to buy his "big brown chewy pearls" but I sure am glad I made this and will probably make it again as dessert when I have guests over next.

The best thing about this was, I made it in the crockpot, so it did not require constant monitoring. I got done in about a couple of hours, the first hour of which was spent in getting my son back from school and running a couple of errands! Also, I did not soak the tapioca seeds before cooking, two hours in the crockpot got it perfectly cooked.

Feel free to experiment with other spices and flavors, but if you want a hassle free dessert - this one fits the bill!

Preparation & Cooking: 2 hours          Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

Small Pearl Tapioca Seeds - 3 tablespoons
Milk - 2 cups
Condensed Milk - 1 can
Salt - ¼ teaspoon
Cardamom (Elaichi) Powder - ¼ teaspoon
Saffron (Kesar) - a few strands
Vanilla Essence - 1 teaspoon
Coconut Pineapple Ice Cream - 1 scoop

Method:

1. In the crock pot combine tapioca seeds, milk and salt and cook on high for 1 hour.

2. Add in the condensed milk, cardamom powder, saffron strands and vanilla essence and cook for another 45 minutes.

3. Finally mix in the scoop of ice cream, cook for another 15 minutes and switch off the crockpot.

Serve hot or chilled...