Strawberry goop shortbread cookie-tart aka tapioca flour is magical!

We've been thickening savoury sauces with tapioca starch for a while now. We like it better than cornstarch, because it doesn't muddy the flavour of things the way cornstarch does.

At some point, we decided to thicken a pie filling with tapioca starch. <.< There's no going back. Tapioca starch is magical in fruit filling type goops. It makes everything so wonderfully blobby and clear and pretty, without being sticky and tacky. And it even re-bakes nicely, if you want to stuff it in a puff pastry and bake it.

Strawberry yuzu goop

Makes about 500g of goop. Don't worry about measuring exactly. :P I don't really measure stuff, and this is all conjecture anyway haha. If you use too much tapioca starch, you'll just end up with a more solid and bouncy goop.

Ingredients

  • 500g strawberries, chopped
  • 30g~ of honey citron tea - brand doesn't matter, they're all nice (yuzu is wonderful with strawberries)
  • 30g~ tapioca starch
  • 30ml water
  • white sugar to taste (depends on how sweet your berries are)
  • ground cardamom to taste

Steps to reproduce

  1. Chop the strawberries into fingernail-sized bits. It's okay if your fingernails are giant or midget. All fingernail sizes are welcome.
  2. Dump chopped strawberries, sugar, honey citron tea, and ground cardamom in a small pot of your choice (needs to be big enough to hold all your strawberries, obviously).
  3. In a separate bowl, add water to the tapioca starch and swirl it around till it forms a slurry. Don't skip this step! If you just dump the tapioca flour into the pot with the rest, you'll end up with tapioca lumps.
  4. Add tapioca flour slurry to the rest of the stuff in the pot.
  5. Cook at low to medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring pretty much all the time. Yeah, it sucks. :( I hate stirring.
    The tapioca slurry will look white at first, but once it's done, it'll turn clear.
  6. When the strawberries are squishy enough for your taste, and everything is goopy and clear, it's done.

The goop is great both hot and cold, and it reheats and bakes well. So once you have the goop, go on and GOOP ALL THE THINGS!