Honestly, it won’t bite.

The stuff that children’s worst nightmares are made of, Tapioca has had bad press almost certainly since it was first invented.

My mother refers to it as slime, frog spawn or slimy frog spawn. It is an old fashioned Tom Brown’s School Days-type pudding that seems to send people spiraling back into a yawning nightmarish chasm of overcooked cabbage, watered down ketchup, gray, gristly mince and teachers standing over you whilst you finished every scrap of foul tasting food.

Fortunately for me, whilst I too suffered the indignation of degrading school dinners, I wasn’t exposed to tapioca so it has no horrible connotations for me. Therefore, I was quite excited to prepare tapioca after seeing a delicious looking recipe in the Latin American Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard.

I have always had a rather strange desire to try these tiny, dazzlingly white spheres. I couldn’t possibly imagine what could be so disagreeable about them. What I was interested to discover was that tapioca is not, as I originally thought, a grain. It is in fact reconstituted, processed Cassava Root (and if that fact doesn’t make it seem all the more appetizing, then I don’t know what will!). Tapioca and Cassava are extremely popular in India and Latin America where they is used as a root vegetable, thickener or served as a sweet dessert. In Taiwan, it is served in Bubble Tea, the globes of tapioca offering a startling contrast to the tea.

The recipe in Luard’s book is called Postre de Tapioca con Coco which makes it sound infinitely more romantic and appetizing than Tapioca Pudding. The little pearls are simmered gently, immersed in a creamy bath of canned coconut milk and sugar and then served chilled. I altered the recipe slightly to add a slightly more exotic feel to the dish, by adding a little cinnamon, some freshly grated nutmeg, vanilla sugar and a few drops of coconut extract. I also added cream and milk to the dish and a knob of butter for added enrichment. My final South Sea-esque flourish was Mango Puree.

The Postre de Tapioca con Coco would make a fun dessert to serve at a dinner party; it would be interesting to see the general opinion of Tapioca change rapidly as they taste this heavenly concoction, which is comfortingly creamy but redolently spicy too. The mango puree cuts through the richness perfectly, although you could use fresh mango or any other tropical fruits, pineapple, papaya, passion fruit or even some poached pears, plums or apples to make it a delicious wintry pudding.

Botanists Note: The root of the Cassava Plant is usually cooked up and used instead of potatoes. It is an excellent source of Calcium and Vitamin C, although it can’t be consumed raw as it contains cyanide. Once cooked or processed though, it has a myriad of uses, from treating hypertension and irritable bowel syndrome to being ground into flour. The bitter juice is turned into a thick syrup called Cassareep and the leaves are pounded up and used in meat stews (called, rather fittingly, palavers). But, until we can buy Cassava Root in its most natural form readily in the supermarket, we must satisfy ourselves with Tapioca:

POSTRE DE TAPIOCA CON COCO
adapted from Elisabeth Luards Latin American Kitchen
Serves 4

125g Tapioca
1 Can Coconut Milk
Milk and Cream to bring the total volume of the coconut milk up to 1 1/2 pints
Pinch Cinnamon
Grating of Fresh Nutmeg
2 Tablespoons Vanilla Sugar (or more to taste), regular sugar is OK too
Mango Puree or fruit of your choice.

In a large heavy based saucepan, pour the milk, cream and coconut milk mixture, the tapioca and the sugar. Mix well.

Add the cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Gently simmer over a very low heat for about an hour or until the tapioca is soft to the tongue but still retains its shape.

Taste and add more sugar if required.

The original recipe suggests leaving this to chill but I preferred it warm. Serve in glasses or bowls with mango puree or the fruit of your choice.

Enjoy and forget all your childhood nightmares….

Agave Nectar comes from the sap produced in the heart of the Agave Plant. The plant is crushed and put through a process which extracts the syrup in its raw form. It is then filtered and heated to a level which breaks down the raw sugar into fructose. At this stage, the syrup can be further refined to produce a pale amber colour or bottled as is, in the dark, rich chestnut colour. There are also different genuses of the Agave plant, very much like honey, which infuse the syrup with floral or vanilla top notes. Like Maple Syrup, Agave Nectar comes in various patinas and flavours, all of which have different properties in cooking but with a less aggressive taste than synthetic sugars, which is great for people, like myself, who can taste saccharin a mile off. No chemicals whatsoever are used in the production of pure Agave Nectar.

When you try Agave Syrup neat, if like me, with your finger stuck in the bottle because you’re not ladylike enough to use a spoon, you will see that the flavour is a rare hybrid of honey and maple syrup but much finer than either. It is 25% sweeter than granulated sugar but it doesn’t have an eye-wincing, tooth-cringing sweetness when you sample it. Despite being clinically sweeter than sucrose, it has no more calories, which basically means you can use less of it in cooking to a similar or identical effect. The texture of Agave Nectar is thinner even than maple syrup which also makes measuring somewhat less of a sticky process than getting all gummed up with honey or golden syrup.

The most important factor about using Agave Nectar, are its processing properties: when consumed it is absorbed into the blood stream slowly so it doesn’t cause that all familiar ‘sugar high’ that you get after binging on chocolate or biscuits (rapidly followed by a sugar low that can cause headaches). The Agave plant has a very low glycaemic index so blood sugar levels aren’t significantly elevated, which makes it ideal for diabetics. There is much more information available on the web which details the rigourous scientific testing that the Agave Nectar has been put through but in short the final test of its affectiveness is to try it out. I came across a website called Sweet Savvy whilst investigating this natural sweetener, that has many Agave Nectar recipes - some savoury, some sweet, some traditional – that diabetics will previously have had to have foregone for medical reasons.

I am particularly excited about trying out a Carrot Cake recipe but I’m out of cream cheese and I must have cream cheese icing on Carrot Cake. So, with that in mind, I made some Shortbread Biscuits instead, replacing the usual caster sugar with Agave Syrup. I prepared some plain biscuits (which I then dusted in Vanilla Caster Sugar - obviously diabetics would omit this stage), and some Linzer Cookies which I filled with my homemade Greengage, Damson and Crab Apple Jam. If you plan to use Agave Syrup instead of regular sugar, expect it to be a little hit and miss, particularly in baking. You will need to reduce the amount of other liquids (i.e. milk or egg) to compensate for extra liquid of the Agave, you may also need to use a smaller quantity of the syrup because it is 25% sweeter. Finally, you may need to reduce the heat of your oven by 10-20 degrees because the fructose in the syrup seems to burn quicker. So, my recommendation to anyone wanting to experiment is just to be extra vigilant watching the oven and not to be too upset if your buns come out flat or your cake collapses, you’ll simply know next time to adjust it.

Here is the recipe for the shortbread in the meantime. I will post the Carrot Cake recipe in due course, once I’ve made it and taste tested it!
This is taken from the Sweet Savvy website where you can find lots more recipes.

SHORTBREAD BUTTER COOKIES
(this would make about 40 3” cookies or 20-25 Linzer Cookies, obviously the size of the cutter makes a difference!)
Ingredients:
170g Butter
¼ Cup Agave Syrup
¾ Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 2/3 Cup Plain Flour
Pinch Salt

METHOD:
Put butter in a large mixing bowl and leave to soften at room temperature. Once soft, beat well with an electric mixer or use someone burly with a wooden spoon. The beating of the butter enables the biscuits to stay crisp and light.

Beat in the Agave Syrup and Vanilla Extract until smooth and fully incorporated. Sift in the flour and salt slowly, mixing until a very stiff batter is formed (it will almost be like pastry dough – yes, that thick!).

Cover with clingfilm and chill for at least two hours. After two hours chilling, the shortbread dough will be very workable (in fact, the most workable dough I have ever used) but does warm up quickly, so if you have to cook in batches, I recommend you work in halves, putting one half of dough in the fridge whilst you work on the other half.

Preheat the oven to 150c. On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to whatever thickness you desire. If you go thinner, you will get lovely butter crisp biscuits that are delicate, if you go thicker, you will get something that resembles the shortbread that you buy in the stores. Either are perfect! Use cookie cutters to cut out different shapes (I used stars) and place on a silicone sheet or piece of grease proof paper on a baking sheet. The original recipe recommended greasing the sheet heavily but I just used a quick spritz of Baker’s Joy (you could use some of that butter in a can for a light greasing).

Bake for between 7-10 minutes depending on thickness. They will brown very quickly and once they turn, they taste burnt and not so good. The cookies will be soft but crisp up rapidly upon contact with the air outside of the cooker.

If you want to make Linzer cookies, use the shape of your choice on your cutter, bake as above but leave to cool completely. Once cool you can sandwich them together with a scant teaspoon of your favourite jam. These would make a beautiful present as they look like tiny stained glass windows - very Christmassy!