Categories: Beverage

Brown Sugar Boba Milk Tea

We are living in some really strange times. There’s no traffic in LA, we’re telling our parents they’re not allowed to go outside (tides have turned haha), and it’s nearly impossible for us to get toilet paper. On the bright side, a while back we had bought some muscovado sugar, and saved it for days when we wanted our boba fix at home.

Muscovado sugar is unrefined cane sugar that naturally contains molasses. This type of sugar is soft, moist, and has a deep molasses flavor. In comparison, regular brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added in.

When a recipe has few ingredients, it is ever more important to have high quality ingredients. We knew that if we wanted to keep ourselves from buying $5 drinks every week, we wanted to throw in a few extra dollars to make our homemade boba taste comparable to boba shops. And if you don’t want to buy muscovado, no worries, use brown sugar! The point of making boba at home is to save money, have fun, and enjoy your creation.

Brown Sugar Boba Milk Tea

This trendy drink is not just for looks — it's nutty, creamy, and slightly sweet. Save time and money by making your own brown sugar boba at home.

Course Drinks

Cuisine Asian

Keyword boba, brown sugar, milk, tea

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 1 30

Total Time 1 35

Servings

Equipment

Ingredients

Milk Tea

5 bags black tea
3 cups water
milk of your choice

Brown Sugar-Braised Boba

1 cup boba pearls
1 cup water
¼ cup muscovado sugar

Instructions

Steep the tea overnight

The night before, fill a jar with water (about 3 cups) and add 5 black tea bags. Steep overnight in the fridge.

Cook the boba

On the day of, fill a pot with water and bring to boil. Add boba. Maintain a rolling boil for 30 min, stirring frequently to keep the boba from sticking to each other.
Rinse and drain the boba thoroughly. Place in a bowl of room temp water and let it sit for 20 min.
In a pot, combine 1 cup water and 1/4 cup muscovado sugar. Stir frequently with medium heat for 5 min or until the sugar is fully dissolved.
Add the boba to the syrup mixture. Maintain a low simmer for 10-20 min, stir frequently until the syrup becomes slightly thick. Test the consistency by taking a spoonful of syrup and turning your spoon sideways to let it fall back into the pot. If you tilt the spoon and it falls off slowly, it is ready. If it stays in place, it is too thick so add a little water. If it runs quickly, keep boiling until it becomes a little thicker.
Remove boba/syrup mixture from heat.

To Serve

Tilt the glass at an angle, and add boba to the top of the glass. The boba will then slide its way straight down to the bottom of the glass, making the tiger stripes. Bonus challenge: make the tiger stripes even better by rotating the glass as the boba slides down.
Next add ice, then black tea, then milk. Tea to milk ratio is really a personal preference, but a good place to start is 1 cup black tea: 2 tbsp milk.

Notes

The stronger the tea, the better! Milk tea has a lot of components that could water down the tea flavors. To ensure you can still taste the tea, steep overnight with multiple bags of tea of your choice.
Stir. Frequently. We said it multiple times in the recipe, because it’s important. You don’t want your boba sticking to each other, do you?

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Noelle Noriesta

Noelle Noriesta, a Filipino-American home cook, is the principal creator of Fork and Spoon. Her recipes have a modern and playful approach inspired by her food experiences growing up in the Bay Area and now in Los Angeles. --Read more about me