Taro Milk Tea Recipe 3 Ways: Real Taro Or Powder

Taro milk tea is a purple bubble tea that tastes creamy and nutty with vanilla notes. Its mellow sweetness, rich texture, and extremely aesthetic light purple hue make it one of Taiwan's most popular boba drinks.

In our taro bubble tea recipe, we'll show you how to make taro milk tea using real taro from scratch, natural root powder and instant milk tea powder. Without a doubt, we prefer using fresh taro root as the taste is richer and naturally more fragrant. However, we've also included recipe steps for using powders as the fresh root can be hard to get overseas.

Enjoy our purple boba recipe, hot or cold. We'll show you our favourite customisations, including our caffeine-free version and how to get different purple layers. For a visual demonstration, watch our YouTube recipe tutorial.

Jump to:

• Taro Milk Tea Ingredients
• Taro Milk Tea Recipe (Fresh Root or Powder)
• Cooking Tips
• How to make taro milk tea with purple layers
• Taro Boba Recipe Using Milk Tea Powder
• Fresh Taro Milk (Caffeine Free)
• Dasheen Smoothie
• Purple Root Milkshake
• Purple Boba Top Variations

Taro Milk Tea Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you'll need to make taro milk tea at home. 

• Fresh taro (or root powder or instant taro milk tea powder)
• Sugar
• Salt 
• Jasmine tea
• Milk
• Tapioca pearls

This drink is called 香芋奶茶 (Xiāng yù nǎichá) in Chinese, which translates to 'Taro Milk Tea'. If you're using an instant taro bubble tea powder, skip the jasmine, sugar and salt.

Fresh Taro

Taro milk tea with fresh taro paste typically has a thicker consistency and a more granular texture due to the bits. The drink is mildly sweet and fragrant. Fresh taro milk tea is usually whitish-grey with a light purple hue. If it looks vividly purple, there's most likely a bit of purple sweet potato, ube powder, or purple food colouring.

Taro root is not a common vegetable sold in supermarkets, so it might be hard to find. We usually find it in our local Asian supermarket, which sells frozen ones. It’s sometimes also called Dasheen or Dasheen tubers.

To prepare the root vegetable, you must peel off the skin and remove the hard top and bottom. We recommend wearing gloves when you're handling fresh taro, as the vegetable has oxalate crystals that can cause itchiness for some people. Running it under cold tap water can also help.

Instant Taro Milk Tea Powder

Taro milk tea made with an instant powder mix is usually more watery in content. It is usually more vibrant in colour because food colouring is added. However, the drink tends to taste more artificially fragrant. With a premade powder mix, you won't be able to customise the sweetness and thickness too much.

Most boba shops usually use a powder mix rather than fresh, pureed vegetables. If you have only 10 minutes, we recommend making taro milk tea with root or instant milk tea powder. If you have more time, you can use the fresh ground root.

An intermediate solution is to use natural taro root powder free from colouring and artificial flavouring. We like using root powder when we can't find the fresh vegetable. It allows us to customise our purple boba drink to the sweetness and creaminess we want.

Jasmine

Our recipe uses jasmine as the green loose-leaf blend with mellow floral notes that work well with the natural nutty vanilla fragrance. However, you can also use other loose-leaf blends like oolong. If you're using Assam or Ceylon, we recommend only using 1 bag and not brewing it for longer than 1-2 minutes. Unlike our classic boba recipe, a strong black brew will ruin the taste of taro milk tea.

Milk

We're using full-fat dairy in our recipe to get a creamy texture. However, you can make vegan taro milk tea using plant-based alternatives. As most instant bubble tea powders are not vegan, this will only work if you're using fresh root or pure root powder. We prefer soy, almond, or oat milk from the different plant-based alternatives. Soy and almond have a nice nuttiness that compliments the fresh root vegetable. Oat has a neutral taste and is thicker, which gives it a creamy texture.

Tapioca pearls

Boba pearls add a fun element to our purple taro bubble tea recipe. To save time, we recommend using instant tapioca pearls. If you have more time, you can make boba pearls from scratch. Then, you can make honey boba, crystal boba, or even strawberry popping pearls to go with this drink.

Cooking Tips

Here are some of our best cooking tips to use for beginners.

Lighter or thicker texture

If you want a lighter drink that's not too thick, reduce the pureed paste you blend in the drink. If you want a thicker drink, make and add more.

Making your purple boba sweeter

We would just add 1 tablespoon of sugar for the taro paste, as we like our boba drink to not be too sweet. However, if you want it sweeter, add 1-2 tablespoon of sugar. Another way to add sweetness is to add sweetened condensed milk. This will also add further creaminess to your purple bubble tea.

We don't recommend skipping the salt when making the root paste. It helps bring out the natural root vegetable’s flavour to make it more pronounced.

Using a dessert paste

We don't recommend buying taro paste for desserts. The paste we make from root vegetables is different from dessert paste. We don't add any oil or coconut cream, as doing so would make the drink too heavy and creamy.

The taro paste for dessert is not only silky smooth but also thicker and creamier. Due to the addition of oil and coconut cream, it also contains more calories. We recommend making the paste, which can be frozen for later use.

How to make taro milk tea with purple layers

To make pretty purple layers, add ½ teaspoon purple sweet potato powder mixed with 1 tablespoon of hot water to the fresh paste. First, add it directly to the bottom of the glass. Then, top it off with the fresh pureed mixture.

In the photos we took, we used ½ teaspoon purple sweet potato powder. You can add more for a darker purple colour.

Taro Boba Recipe Using Milk Tea Powder

Here are the ingredients you'll need:

• 2 tablespoons Taro milk tea powder
• ½ teaspoon Purple sweet potato powder (optional)
• ¾ cup hot water
• ¼ cup full-fat dairy milk
• 2-3 tablespoons tapioca pearls
• Ice optional

1. Dissolve the milk tea powder and purple sweet potato powder in hot water in a cup.
2. Then, add in the dairy and stir until well combined.
3. Assemble.

Fresh Taro Milk (Caffeine Free)

Fresh milk tea is made from the root vegetable, sugar, salt and full fat dairy. This is called 芋頭鮮奶 (Yùtou xiān nǎi) in Chinese which translates to 'Taro Fresh Milk'. Despite some boba shops calling it a 'tea', there is no caffeine inside this drink. Therefore, it is caffeine-free.

In Taiwan, this is one of the most popular options as it boasts itself as a healthier option than other beverage snacks. However, don't be fooled, fresh milk drinks like this one can equally have more than 400 calories per one serving of 300ml.

Most boba shops might not make it clear straight from the menu. Therefore, the way to know is if the drink is called "fresh milk". This will usually indicate that fresh dairy instead of a creamer is the main ingredient. In addition, most boba shops will only serve this drink cold.

You can easily make our recipe into a fresh milk version by removing the jasmine. This will also make your purple boba caffeine free.

Dasheen Smoothie

It is a little thicker in consistency than the two mentioned above. If you have mastered making purple milk tea with instant powder or fresh paste, this will be easy. 

1. First, add 150g of fresh root paste or 2 tablespoon of instant powder into a blender. 
2. Secondly, add ½ cup of ice with 1 tsp. of condensed milk and 2 teaspoon of cane sugar. 
3. Blend together and serve cold.

Purple Root Milkshake

For a milkshake, follow the steps to the recipe above but omit the caffeine element. Before assembling the drink, blend the mixtures with crushed ice and heavy cream. 

If you're using fresh pureed paste, then use ¼ cup heavy cream. If using powder, use ½ cup heavy cream. Use about ½ cup crushed ice.

Full fat dairy and cream is typically incorporated to thicken the drink and make it more creamy. It is topped off with whipped cream. We wouldn't recommend using bananas in making a milkshake. This is because the banana flavour would be too overpowering. You can just add more paste to make it thicker instead of adding other fruits.

Purple Boba Top Variations

Like any other boba drink, this is highly versatile. Here are the top variations to make.

• Brown sugar tapioca pearls
• Purple boba pearls
• Add other toppings, e.g. coffee jelly, grass jelly, azuki red bean
• Incorporate ube or purple sweet potato to make the colour of the drink brighter
• Use a different type of loose-leaf blend. We recommend sticking with other green leaf blends to start. However, you can experiment with different blends and the strength of these.

Taro is a flavour that's sweeping across Taiwan, and multiple other snacks use fresh pureed paste. Check out our recipes on tangyuan, ice cream, cake, mochi, and much more.