Queue No More: Make Your Own Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Tea

The situation where "pearls" are dearer than a diamond ring (in Malaysia!).

#pearl #milktea #brownsugarpearlmilkdrink

On April 29, there was a Facebook post that I found ridiculously hilarious yet at the same time agree with the OP’s rants about the opening of another new Pearl Milk Tea cafe around the same area in Kuala Lumpur.

Source: Taylor's University Confessions on Facebook

In these few recent months, the business (as well as the trend!) related to this certain type of beverage originated from Taiwan, which is the “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink”, is expanding rapidly in Malaysia, especially in KL.

So, what’s so great about the “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink” that it is so (and still) hyped up by many people or their fans?

(Sorry readers, the anti-social side of me just doesn’t get the hype and doesn’t like the idea of queuing.)

According to 8 Days, where they have tested 12 different “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink” from different brands out and ranked them, some inferences for the "hype" were made:

#1 It does not contain any caffeine for its simple combination of merely milk, caramel-ly brown sugar and tapioca pearls;

#2 A cup of that is pretty to look at (and for Instagram purpose, of course!);

#3 Different shops offer their own tricks and unique ways of drinking in order to bring out the best of taste for customers and,

#4 The level of sugar (literally) is not controllable like how customers could do it when ordering ordinary pearl milk tea from other famous pearl milk tea chains.

So...

Looking at how basic the ingredients were, I decided to make my own “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink” with my sister, to justify whether it deserves a "YASSSS or PUI!" by questioning whether they worth the price, time and effort to get a cup of that.

Some forewords as usual...

With the list of ingredients that I have gotten from the video tutorial on the Chinese Pinterest-like social media 小红书 Xiao Hong Shu, it seemed pretty easy.

But, at the same time, I was also aware of the level of authenticity of cooking tutorial videos like this, where the parts of preparation and failures are intently removed or fast-forwarded.

Anyways, good luck to myself!

The list of ingredients is summarised as below:

Ingredients for pearls:

Brown sugar 50g

Water 70g

Tapioca flour 90g

Ingredients to prepare for drink:

Brown sugar 50g

Water 100g

Ice

Milk

The steps to prepare the “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink” are as below:

Source of Recipe: 新草小哥哥 on 小红书 Xiao HongShu

Verdict

I took more time than I expected earlier as I was taking some photos and videos for blog purpose. So, some procedures are delayed. The first attempt to make the tapioca ball dough was a failure so my sister just gave me half of her dough.

Part of the reason was: rolling them manually into smaller tapioca balls was extremely time-consuming! Total time taken was around 2-3 hours to make 3 glasses of them.

Making dough for tapioca balls could be tricky

After cutting and before kneading them to round balls

Here’s my suggestion:

Make it only if there is no any “Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drink” chain around your area (or just don't drink at all), that’s more worthy if you’re spending your time with your family to do that.

Buying one cup of that MIGHT be more time-saving although there are long queues and traffic congestion around that area, which I could not guarantee whether you are able to get out of them by the time you could have finished making your own drink at home.

So, legit anot? It's really up to you to decide.

A reminder here: Remember to get yourself a metal straw for bubble tea beforehand (to avoid grumpy bf/gf)