Tapioca flour is made from the root of the cassava plant, Manihot esculenta. On most food labels “tapioca flour” and tapioca starch mean the same thing: the pure starch washed out of grated cassava and dried to a fine, bright white powder. It differs from cassava flour, which is made by drying and grinding the whole peeled root and still contains its fibre.
Tapioca flour has a neutral taste and, once cooked, gives a soft, slightly elastic texture and helps hold moisture. It appears in Today Snowball Cake With Milk Cream from Turkey, alongside wheat flour, egg and whey protein; in cakes like this, tapioca typically helps keep the crumb soft and moist.
Tapioca contains no gluten and is not an allergen, although a product that uses it may still contain wheat, as this cake does.
