Black Treacle Toffee Milk and Coffee Jelly with Baby Tapioca

This dessert came to me in a dream: I saw it on a table, in a fogged-up glass, beaded and cold. At the time, I was in the Cayman Islands, where I’d stopped over for a brief cooking residency before flights were suspended due to COVID-19. The tropics are hardly the worst place to be marooned in the middle of an epidemic, but I think my body was craving the flavors of Asia and channeling memories of milk teas I’d slurped down on the streets of Taipei. When I woke up, I jotted down the ingredi