Tapioca Pudding

I had never tried tapioca pudding before today. It always made me think of coconut--so I thought of tapioca as a fattening no-no. But I've found a way to make it delicious and guilt-free...okay--so maybe only guilt free.

2 3/4 cups fat-free milk
3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca (precooked)
1/2 cup sugar substitute
1/2 cup egg substitiute
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
1 teaspoon imitation vanilla (or true extract)


In large saucepan, combine first 5 ingredients. I always use dryed milk because I don't drink milk straight.....and because my mother refuses to buy skim milk. Hopefully, you don't find a bug in your tapioca like I did. I'm thinking we have not used it in a while, and thank God the bug was dead (so I just scooped it out with a spoon). Egg whites can be used instead of the egg substitute. Lemon zest can be used instead of orange peel--I just didn't have any lemon zest in the house. Let the combination stand for 5 minutes.


Cook over medium heat and whisk until the mixture comes to a boil. This took much longer than I expected, and I got impatient and turned up the heat to medium-hot because it was taking so long. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.


Let the pudding cool for approximately 20 minutes. Stir and then transfer to a dish. I put it in one dish since my mother and I plan to eat it right out of the big bowl, but you can put it into 6 individual serving dishes if desired. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until cool and ready to serve.


Note: I measured all of the ingredients for this recipe since I would consider it more baking than cooking, and I did not want to mess with the chemistry.

So how was it?

Definitely NOT what I thought it would be. And according to my mom: not what it should be either.

The tapioca was little crumbles, so it made the pudding very gritty. This was because of the type of tapioca I used.


The flavor was--I'm not going to lie--pretty bad. I blame it on the sugar substitute and the fat-free milk. You should have seen the look on our faces as we took the first bite. It would have been a good picture moment--but my camera was not near by.

  However, I will call the tapioca pudding acceptable. Because at this point I would prefer guilt-free to delicious. I might binge on it if it actually tasted good.

It is not worth showing my socks today. They were boring. So here are my mother's socks instead!