Apple Tapioca Pudding

A no-milk and no-egg tapioca!

I'm a big fan of puddings, and so this recipe intrigued me. Apple slices are sauteed with caramelized sugar, pearl tapioca is soaked and then cooked in a double boiler, and then these two components are layered in a baking dish. Finally, the dish is topped with brown sugar and bread crumbs.

I had a fair amount of trouble with the sauteed apple slices. The sugar wanted to burn, and I added the apples a bit too early. They first cooled the sugar, and then they gave off a lot of water. I terminated cooking when the apples were soft (as instructed), but the caramel sauce was very runny. In retrospect, I should have cooked it down, but I didn't.

My second problem was that I only had about 2/3 of the called for small pearl tapioca, and so added about 2T of instant. After cooking in the double boiler I was amazed at its glue-like consistency.

I made about four layers of apples, with three layers of tapioca. Used panko with brown sugar for the coating on the top.

I used a slightly larger pan, but it still overflowed. The recipe calls for six apples - mine were big, so I only used five, but probably should have used 3 or 4.

13 daughter suggested that smaller apple pieces would be better. Despite these problems, it tasted good, especially with a bit of vanilla ice cream.