I have to accept. I am officially freaked out. Freaked out at the insane speed of time breezing past me. I mean is it time already to post yet another theme of FSB? We have completed  4 themes and are only raring to get ourselves challenged some more. This month's theme was a brainchild of dearest Lata of Flavours and Tastes fame. We had to pick out a number from 1-12 where each number corresponded to an mystery ingredient out of which we had to make a dessert.  I picked out my favorite number that turned out to be Tapioca. I was glad having never cooked with it before. It has been in my list of ingredient to try but well it somehow got replaced with some other list  until Lata bought me back to my original list of to-do's.

Having never tried my hand with it before, I intended to dive into it right away. But life had other plans and just 10 days before the posting date I got a rude awakening about the deadline. I had completely forgotten about it and went to the shop the very same day to get some tapioca. I was greeted with tapioca of different shapes and not having done my home work I was not sure which one to buy. I closed my eyes and picked the first one that my hand touched :) The large pearl tapioca looked at me. I planned to try out few recipes so that I get  a feel for the ingredient. But I finally got around to make something only yesterday. Not having any idea, I thought the best thing to do was start at the basics. The Changes I Made :  I used the recipe provided in the packet itself and adapted it to make it eggless. I used cornstarch to thicken my pudding and used 2% milk instead of whole milk. The chocolate chips that I had on hand were semi sweet and hence went for the same. The pudding was deliciously creamy and velvety. Its mildly sweet and was a hearty (and a guilt free) treat. Can you see the texture of the pudding? I had a tough time trying to make this chocolate dessert look as good as it did in my serving cup. I seriously developed photographic insecurity at the amount of time I was taking to get this picture right. 45 minutes for one final pic?? Na - that's so not me. My love for photography extends only up to the point where I can show the food the way it was on my plate. Hope I managed to get that across :)