Bubble Tea: Make Your Own at Home!

Mahut (Unicorn Food) serves up a slight and gifty guide to DIY bubble tea, a drink of “tea (green, black or white), cold or hot, and milk with tapioca pearls, fruit, or jelly” that was “born on the streets of Taiwan in the 1980s.” Prep time for all recipes is 15 minutes, with the steps for each staying mostly the same as ingredients change. Crème brûlée bubble tea calls for brown sugar and a mixture of cream and powdered sugar floating on top. Other offerings include jasmine green tea with lime, a grassy matcha, and a hot coconut latte. Most valuable for the home chef are instructions for cooking and storing tapioca pearls and making fruit jellies, though Mahut recommends buying fruit syrup pearls from an Asian grocery store. Disappointingly, though almost every tea variation calls for a flavored syrup (green apple, rose, mango, strawberry-banana), instructions for making these concoctions are not included. Instead, Mahut pads the page count with infographics about ideal ingredient proportions and fun facts, and ends the collection with a recipe for a waffle lollipop to “enjoy with” bubble tea that sounds tasty but feels out of place. Still, for true bubble tea enthusiasts, this will work as a source of inspiration for different flavors to try. (Feb.)