It's Always Boba Time!

One day I was walking around an Asian grocery store. As I searched for different ingredients, I found dried tapioca balls aka boba or bubble (however you call it, it's tapioca balls). I thought to myself, why buy boba when you can make your own and play around with different flavors! Here's how I stumbled upon making my own hazelnut thai iced tea with boba: 

First, this is how dried boba looks like; it's all shriveled up and tiny!

1. I made a good amount of thai tea. I didn't measure this. Instead, I just eyeballed the tea leaves and water. I made sure the thai tea color is a dark shade of brown (like the picture above).  

2. In a separate pot of water, add in the boba (the boba is still very frozen so make sure you thaw it out to make it easier on yourself--I ended up chopping up the boba and had a block of boba in my pot until it dissolved into many pieces). I overestimated the amount of boba I wanted to use, but as they say "the more the merrier." I didn't read the instructions on the boba bag and used my judgement to how I wanted to make the boba. I added a good amount of sugar in the pot of water with the boba. It will turn into that dark sugar syrup you see when you order boba drinks.

My water to boba ratio notes: Boba will absorb the water and sugar, so if you are eyeballing as I did, I added enough water so that there is approx. 2 inches of water above the boba.

Boil (low) the boba for about 20 minutes, stir occasionally to keep from scorching and help separate the boba pieces as it breaks down.


3. The final step. Combining the ingredients:
Use a spoon with holes to strain the boba unless you want some of the syrup. Pour boba into a cup.
To your cup, add in the thai tea (you can make this hot or cold--for my picture below I made ice tea), then hazelnut creamer or french vanilla, half and half, milk, cream, whatever your preference. I should also mention that depending on your preference of tea is how you should add more or less of milk or tea.

And here it is, my boba drink!