Fresh Fruit Smoothies (Bubble Tea Minus the Bubbles)

Hello everyone! So with summer upon us, and nice weather (kind of) on the horizon, my mind has been drifting to sweet, summer flavors. One thing that I had a late night craving for the other night was a big, fresh watermelon bubble tea...mmm. Sadly though, the bubble tea house had been long closed by this time...not like I had any money for one anyways! I looked into the fridge to see that we did in fact have a gigantic, juicy watermelon just waiting to be eaten...so I turned to the internet to find out what their secret is to making fresh fruit boba so damn good! I could deal with a tapioca-less bubble tea for one night, right?

Well...I found their secret. Turns out it's much more simple than I thought it might be...here it is...

A sugar syrup made with both BROWN and WHITE sugar!

That's it!

You take equal parts brown and white sugar, and then an equal part water (for example, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup white sugar and 1 cup of water).

Bring all the ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, and as soon as the mixture begins to boil, remove it from the heat!

Let it cool to room temp.

And you're done!

It's so bizarre, but as soon as this little mixture started bubbling, I really smelt the bubble tea house... It really is the brown sugar that is the secret!

The next steps to making a bubble-tea-esque smoothie are chopping up the fruit of your choice (I did watermelon, and then later on got carried away and tried banana). 

Put equal parts chopped fruit and ice in your blender (or magic bullet...).

Fill the blender up with milk to where the fruit stops.

Finally add about a tablespoon or so of your sugar syrup and blend away!

This puppy actually tasted so similar to a watermelon bubble tea! I just need to pick up some tapioca pearls now...

The banana smoothie was okay...it was delicious at first, but then the banana started to "settle" a bit...which wasn't so pleasant.

So there is my recipe for an at-home bubble tea fresh fruit smoothie! I'm going to head to the asian grocery store sometime soon to get the tapioca pearls, and I'll post a real bubble tea sometime soon!

xoxo

Mariel