bubble tea.

it all started when our thai classmate pointed out that there was a bubble tea place near our school in padova. i had no idea about what exactly a bubble tea was, but shruti was quite excited. she had tried the authentic bubble tea in singapore over the summer, and so we decided to visit this bubble tea place to see how it was.

the bubble tea shop was pretty small with random stuff placed in some glass cabinets. the inside of the shop was very colorful with pink and green decorations. but that's not our subject, shruti.

so, focusing back on the bubble tea.

bubble tea is a flavored tea specialty with added tapioca pearls to give a chewy effect. the tea is shaken before serving so that it forms some foam, and served with a big, wide straw.

apparently this version of the bubble tea included huge pearls filled with weird juice instead of the chewy tapioca. dissatisfied with this, we have decided to make our own bubble tea flavored with raspberry, which coincided with our desire to put off studying for a final exam. it is interesting that whenever we have an exam, we get the sudden urge to cook exotic and lavish meals for hours. talk about procrastination. 555.

so we visited the local organic shop to get tapioca that i had seen earlier and white tea. what we had in mind was to mix white tea with crushed raspberry to make raspberry tea, and then to add the tapioca pearls to give it the bubble tea texture. problem was, the only tapioca pearls available were the small white ones that are typically used for tapioca pudding. we bought the pearls anyway, because making that raspberry bubble tea became an obsession in a matter of hours.

how did we make it:
- we put 4-5 tea bags in boiled water in a pot and let it sit for a while, until it cooled down.
- we crushed fresh raspberries and added a little sugar to make a syrup
- we added the syrup to the cooled tea, then filtered out the raspberry flesh and seeds and placed in the fridge.
- we placed the tapioca pearls in boiling water, we removed the pot from the stove when it started boiling again, then we waited for the pearls to form.
- we added the tapioca pearls to the raspberry tea and served ourselves some bubble tea. oh yeah.