Ingredients

For the bubbles

• 3 tsp sugar
• 1 cup of tapioca pearls (I used WuFuYuan pearls I bought from GrandMart, and they’re fairly common in Asian grocery stores)
• 6 cups of water

For the black milk tea

• 1/2 cup of milk
• 4 tbp sugar
• 3 cups of brewed black tea

(Modified for 3 servings from this recipe on AllRecipes. The quantities for making bubble tea for a single person are kinda annoying!)

Bring the water to a boil, then stir in 3 teaspoons of sugar until it dissolves. Slowly pour in your tapioca pearls, and cook them on high for 15-20 minutes while slowly stirring throughout. This is kind of boring, but delightfully easy! The bubbles should be soft yet chewy at the end. Rinse and drain the bubbles, then chill them in the fridge.

For the tea, I bought a pack of Lipton Pearl Black tea and just steeped about 6 tea bags in 3 cups of water I boiled. The tea should be pretty strong to keep the flavor. (If anyone knows a better way to brew tea in large quantities then feel free to share with the class~) Pour in the milk and sugar and stir until they’re pretty well incorporated. Let the tea cool and chill it in the fridge as well.

After both the tea and bubbles are cold to your liking, scoop some bubbles into a cup, pour in the tea, and throw in some ice cubes. Note: when storing, keep the bubbles separate from the tea. They sit and store better that way. They lose some of their texture after about a day, but I’m told that if they get harder, you should microwave them for about 2 minutes to soften them up again. I haven’t verified this for myself yet soooo just sayin’. Edit: reheating works. Hoorah!

Also! I got fat bubble straws from Teavana for about $2.50. You should buy them, because bubble tea isn’t as fun if you’re scooping the bubbles out with a spoon!

For Fraz’s grandmother’s birthday, I threw together a menu and Fraz executed about 80% of it with me as helper. The menu consisted of champagne shrimp with pasta for the entree, and spinach w/ lemon juice and a fruit salad as the sides. 

Everything was delicious, though I especially like the fruit salad— it was very easy to make, and I actually did so the next morning to go with breakfast. Take strawberry, bananas, and grapes, then mix it up with strawberry yogurt. The yogurt is so simply GREAT. We substituted bananas with peaches here, but unfortunately, the peaches needed to ripen a little.

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Jo is visiting me this weekend! I made her a ghetto version of Ellen’s pasta primavera, which turned out well, but then Jo wanted to take me somewhere nice for dinner today. We went to Cafe de Bangkok, a Thai place which tends to be very hit or miss with its menu. They gave us reasonable portions of drunken noodles and basil rice wok, and we enjoyed our respective dishes along with the overall portion size. We finished enough that we had enough room for desert, so we ordered their mango cheesecake for dessert.

Best decision of the weekend by far.

The plating was adorable with the caramel syrup surrounding the cake like a sun. The cheesecake tasted so much creamier than normal, with a warm, soft taste that was pretty much perfection in combination with the mango. Mmmmmm.

However, Cait was pondering cupcakes, and showed me a recipe for Thai Ice Tea Cupcakes, and hey, I HAD ALL THOSE INGREDIENTS IN MY HOUSE minus the cream cheese for the frosting, but I was at the point where I’d be willing to go out and get that later. 

Yesterday consisted of lessons about chard. Today I learned about cooking with egg whites! I r total baking/cooking noob, so I’d never separated eggs before. Beating egg whites to “soft peaks” also presented itself as a new experience. Basically, beat them eggs until they’re all delightfully foamy!

Then … I had to fold them into the batter. What even??

Luckily, I had Sophie on the intarwebs to hold my hand through all this. She also sent me this video, which features a delightfully congenial and not-cheesy guide to all of the above. Folding the eggs properly is especially key for leavening (or “sproinging” as Sophie said) the cupcakes. Like bread!

I don’t think I folded the egg whites totally evenly, but it was still so satisfying to see some of them just poppin’ up! Like daisies! And look how adorably round some of them are!

In the end, they taste very quirkily delicious. I mean, they didn’t taste like thai ice tea, and it’s hard to describe beyond “nom-worthy”. The frostings were pretty badass, though. WARNING: I’d say you only need a fourth of what the frosting recipe calls for, as I now have a huge bag of thai ice tea cream cheese frosting leftover. It’s definitely more than enough for 24 cupcakes. Then again, my cupcakes don’t look nearly as voluminous and pretty as the original post’s pictures. HMM.

And yeah, I made some thai ice tea to eat with my cupcake. It’s made with a mix my parents get from GrandMart. My mom throws little jasmine tea leaves in, and they add a lovely twist to the drink!

Things I learned about chard:

1. What the hell it is. Apparently it’s like beets, except the leafy part?
2. It is not available in your local Giant. We had to make an extra trip to Whole Foods for this ingredient!
3. IT IS SO HUGE. The bunch we got was about as big as my head, and took up the whole wok when we were sautéing the vegetables.

And now, my favorite part! DOCUMENTATION.

(Also, my roommate’s boyfriend accidentally knocked her dinner over before her 3-hour orchestra dress rehearsal, so to help him get out of hot water, I figured it’d be nice for us to make her a meal to come home to.)

One time I cooked steaks and promptly forgot how I did it. Thus, tonight, I set out to make steaks to remember always. I used Jo’s steak sauce and got a quick guide from Spanky over the phone. 

AND THE RESULTS:

DELICIOUS.

The moral of the story is to never underestimate the power of Smarties.

Karen made “Better Than Sex” cupcakes with two different icings, and Jo had her cupcake decorating contest!

See the whole set here!

Until then, enjoy these pictures of cupcake adventures from a month ago! These are from a Cupcake Project recipe Karen found for strawberry cupcakes with a champagne glaze.