Strawberry Milk Tea (Boba Pearls And Fresh Strawberries)

Strawberry milk tea or strawberry bubble tea is a sweet tarty drink for people who enjoy fresh fruit, milk, and, optionally, tea. 

While it's usually made with strawberries in season, using milk tea powder and fruit juice extracts makes it possible to have it off-season. In many boba shops, the 'strawberry milk' drink offered there may not contain tea. This can sometimes lead to confusion, especially when ordering in-store. 

You can make our strawberry milk tea recipe with or without tea. We'll be adding tapioca pearls, but feel free to omit this or add a different bubble tea topping.

Jump to:

• Strawberry Milk Tea Ingredients
• Strawberry Milk Tea Recipe with Fresh Strawberries
• Using Black Tea
• Thicker consistency
• Without tea
• No Milk
• Making a strawberry puree
• Using powder mixes
• Toppings

Strawberry Milk Tea Ingredients

To make strawberry milk tea, you'll need the following ingredients:

• Strawberry
• Milk
• Tea
• Simple syrup
• Tapioca pearls (optional)
• Ice (optional)

Strawberry

For our recipe, we'll be using fresh strawberries. If the fruit tastes very tart or sour, you can still use them. However, we suggest adding more sugar or simple syrup to help balance the flavour.

However, you can use frozen ones if you can't find in-season strawberries. These will also give you a creamier and denser texture if you blend them without thawing.

Milk

Typically, boba stores use either whole, full-fat dairy milk or a non-dairy creamer. So, we'll use dairy for our recipe to get a thick, creamy flavour. If you want to keep this drink dairy-free, you can use a plant-based alternative like oat, soy, or almond milk.

Tea

For the tea part, we're using green tea rather than black tea like Assam or Ceylon. This is because Assam and other black loose-leaf blends have a robust, malty taste that doesn't complement the sweetness and tartness of strawberries. On the other hand, Jasmine works very well, as it has a very subtle floral taste that allows the fruit to shine through.

Simple Syrup

Simple syrup is a sweetener made from 1 part sugar and 1 part water. It's quick and easy to make, and we use it in most of our cold drink recipes to incorporate the sugar evenly. Add sugar and water to a pot on low heat until all the sugar granules have melted.

Using granulated sugar in cold drinks isn't a good idea as it won't dissolve evenly. But if you don't mind the drink having some sugar granules or a grainy texture, you can use sugar. Apart from simple syrup, you can also use honey or brown sugar syrup, but remember, these will add their own floral or caramel taste to your drink.

Using Black Tea

If you want to use black tea, you can use Assam for a full-bodied and stronger flavour. This will give you a stronger taste of the tea base and has a stronger caffeine content.

To make a strong brewed Assam for strawberry milk tea, you can brew your loose leafs for 15 minutes. However, using black loose-leaf blends would also mean the taste of the strawberry will be weaker.

Personally, we don’t prefer this as the black loose leaf blends tend to be too strong for us to enjoy the fruity tartness in the drink.

Thicker consistency

For a thicker consistency of strawberry milk tea, try making our recipe using frozen strawberries instead. This will help you get more of a strawberry smoothie texture. Alternatively, add 2 tablespoon of full-fat plain yoghurt.

We've also made a version with strawberry chunks rather than blending it. It's a delight if you like to munch on fruit, and it makes a great dessert.

Without tea

You can remove the tea in this recipe if you want and use ½ cup of milk instead. This will have a creamy diary as the drink's base. The milk version tends to be rich and creamy like a dessert, while the tea version is lighter and easier to sip on. While the strawberry flavour is still vivid in the tea version, it is less creamy and sweet. So, for a more mature palette, we recommend choosing strawberry milk tea over strawberry au lait (milk).

If you prefer this drink without the tea, we recommend checking out our recipe for Korean strawberry milk. Our step-by-step video explains how to make strawberry milk using fresh strawberries. In our video, we added tapioca pearls to our homemade beverage.

No Milk

One good thing about many boba drinks is that they're customisable. If you don't want to use milk, you can use a plant-based alternative or none at all. 

Personally, we feel that almond and oat milk go best with strawberry milk tea. Almond milk has the most neutral taste, which combines well with the rest of the ingredients.

Soy milk has a distinct nutty taste that may compete with the drink's fruity flavours, while coconut milk is overall too rich and has an intense coconut flavour, which we think overpowers the drink's flavour.

Moreover, these plant-based options also offer patrons low-calorie boba tea when ordering their customised drink. This is because plant-based milk generally has a lower calorie count per cup compared to regular full-dairy milk.

You'll create a lovely fruit juice-infused tea for a version with no milk added.

Making a strawberry puree

If you want to cover the glass with pink and white layers aesthetically, you can boil fresh strawberries with sugar over low heat for 1-2 minutes. This will make a thicker paste that you can use for decorative purposes. However, we don't recommend using this as a replacement for fresh blended fruits. The boiled puree has a lighter strawberry flavour that won’t be as nice to drink.

Using powder mixes

While you can use strawberry milk tea powder to make your drink, we don't recommend it. The main reason is that we've yet to find one that hasn't tasted overly sweet and artificial. Usually, it's only made with either concentrated strawberry juice or just an artificial strawberry flavouring. They also have a ton of added sugars. Some brands use a small amount of concentrated strawberry juice, but most ingredients are water and cane sugar.

Admittedly, powder drink mixes are very convenient because all you need to do is a scoop, mix, and voila – it's ready to be enjoyed. There are also caffeine-free strawberry milk tea powders (and other flavours) that are available in the market.

Toppings

Other than some chewy tapioca pearls, many boba toppings will go well with your strawberry milk tea. Here are some combinations you should check out.

A personal favourite that we recommend is the 'taro + strawberry latte'. You can smear some taro paste at the bottom of the glass or around the glass for a purple and pink drink that has an added nutty vanilla taste.

Adding salted cream cheese foam and crystal boba adds a savoury twist and a lovely jelly-like chew. Another topping that we like to add is fresh mango chunks. The contrast in fruity flavours enhances the sweetness of the drink. 

All these toppings enhance the deliciousness of the strawberry milk tea in a unique way. If you prefer a more aesthetic drink, you can use rose petals or chopped strawberries as garnish.

Have you tried making strawberry milk tea at home? Share your photos on Instagram. Looking for new boba recipes to try at home? Check out our easy Oolong milk tea recipe.