I have a box of "Minit" Tapioca Pudding that I bought a bit ago to thicken things that need thickening in my slow cooker. Tapioca usually isn't my dessert of choice, but once when I was feeling very hungry and very lazy and there was nothing else in the house, I just made the tapioca pudding according to the recipe on the box. It's really easy. All you need is the tapioca, some milk, an egg, sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla. You boil all of the ingredients up in a pan, let it sit, and it's ready.
Things that are really simple like that are also really fun to play with. For instance, say you didn't want the familiar, comforting flavors of vanilla, but instead the tropical flavors of mango and coconut with a tart twist of lime? I decided to replace the 2 3/4 cups of milk with a can of coconut milk* plus 3/4 cup of water (the can has roughly 2 cups of liquid inside), add a barely-ripe chopped mango (this is a good way to get the most out of barely-ripe fruits), and for tartness, I zested a lime and rendered its juice.
I still followed the basic recipe: I combined in a pan 2 3/4 cup liquid (in this case, coconut milk and water), 3 tbsp. minute tapioca pearls, one beaten egg, 1/4 cup sugar, plus all my tropical goodies (lime zest, juice, chopped mango). The ingredients must be stirred constantly to the point of boiling, then let to rest off the heat for 20 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.
The results were delicious! A very well-balanced dessert, it was creamy, fresh, and zingy with the lime.
*I usually buy lite coconut milk, but I heard on the show Anna and Kristina's Grocery Bag (a great show, by the way) that lite coconut milk is basically just regular coconut milk mixed with water, so if you want to reduce calories, it's much more cost effective to just thin out the milk at home yourself. Going with this idea, I bought regular coconut milk for use today. When I tasted the regular, though, it was so much more coconutty and wonderful than the lite coconut milk that I will never go back.
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