We had three of the Tastebuds over for dinner last Saturday to watch the Socceroos’ must-win match against Ghana.

The Tastebuds tend to get a little carried away when we’re together – especially when it comes to food. With dessert already in the oven, we decided it wasn’t enough and there had to be a second dessert – or ‘pre’ dessert as Mr. Taste likes to call it.

We all settled on reproducing Martin Boetz’s Tapioca Pudding, in honour of the version we sampled earlier in the year at Taste of Sydney. Tapioca pudding is a quick and easy dessert that doesn’t take long at all to pull together. There’s no real setting required and tastes fantastic served warm. Sadly the season doesn’t allow for fresh fruit, so we used the tinned variety, which works just as well!

Although Australia drew against Ghana that night, the Tapioca Pudding did help to ease a little of that pain. Let’s just hope the boys pull a big victory against Serbia tomorrow!

Tapioca Pudding with Lychee, Jackfruit and Rambutan

Adapted from a recipe by Martin Boetz, Executive Chef of Longrain

Ingredients

1 cup tapioca pearls
12 cups water
500g superfine castor sugar
½ cup coconut cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon salt

Method

1. Bring 12 cups of water to the boil and pour in the tapioca, stirring so that the pearls do not stick to the bottom.

2. Simmer until the pearls become transparent with just a tiny dot of white left in the middle. This will take about 10 minutes.

3. Pour into a strainer and rinse in cold water.

4. Combine the castor sugar, coconut cream, vanilla extract and salt in a heavy-based saucepan over a moderate heat and stir.

5. Once the sugar dissolves, remove from heat. You can serve warm or cool the mixture small bowls. Serve with shreded jackfruit, lychees, rambutans and longans.