v v v background info on tang yuan is on the bottom v v v
Difficulty: maybe 3/5 stars? or 1.5 pjs
Ingredients
Black Sesame Filling
80 g roasted black sesame seeds (3/4 cup)
70 g caster's sugar, can be subbed with regular white sugar (5 tbsp)
60 g unsalted butter (4 tbsp), soften at room temperature
15 g water (1 tbsp)
1 pinch sea salt
Dough
180 g glutinous/sweet rice flour (1.5 cups), plus more for dusting
135 g water (1/2 cup + 2 tbsp), room temperature
Soup
3 tbsp brown sugar
2 cup water
3 slices ginger
For the Filling,
If they aren't already, toast your sesame seeds on a pan for about 2 minutes on medium heat. This will make the sesame nuttier and give it a stronger aroma!
Add the sesame seeds and sugar in a food processor and grind till they have a grainy texture. I stopped once they kinda looked flaky like brown sugar or almond flour??
Add the butter, water and salt into the food processor. You'll know the butter is ready if you can see your fingerprint when you press! Blend in pulses until it becomes a paste.
Move the mixture into a bowl, cover, and freeze while you work on the dough. This helps when you assemble since it won't be going everywhere. (The paste can last in the freezer for a while!)
Making the dough,
To cook the dough, have about two cups of water ready to boil in a small pot. (more doesn't hurt lol)
Mix the room temperature water with the glutinous rice flour, and stir until the water is absorbed by the flour. (you can use a whisk but I just used chopsticks since it works)
Form one small dough ball (~1.5" in diameter), press it flat and cook it in the boiling water until it floats.
Add this to the rest of the flour mixture and let the dough cool down a bit before kneading the whole thing until the dough is soft and smooth. Cover with a damp towel to keep it from drying out while you prepare the filling.
Prepping and Assembling the Tang Yuan,
Separate the filling into 20 portions and roll them into little balls. Cover these and keep 'em in the freezer while working on the dough.
Roll the dough into a log then cut it into 20 pieces. Roll all them little pieces into balls.
Flatten these balls into a flat wrap that's about 2.5" or 6cm. Make sure to make the edges a bit thinner just so you don't have a fat clump of dough in the finished product.
Put the a sesame ball in the middle of a piece of dough and wrap it around! Easy right? Well you have 19 more so this is more fun to do with friends hehe
If you aren't cooking them right away it's best to freeze them after assembling!
Cooking the Tang Yuan
Boil some water and place them into the water carefully. Occasionally move them with a spatula or spoon to keep them from sticking to the pot.
Once the water starts boiling again, decrease the heat to maintain a gentle boil and cook until they float.
The tang yuan are fine by themselves, but you can make a simple ginger soup to make it taste even better.
Brown Sugar Ginger Soup,
Heat a pot over medium heat, adding the brown sugar. Cook and stir until it starts to melt.
Add water and ginger and bring it to a boil. The longer the soup cooks, the more ginger-y it'll get, so keep that in mind!
Just place the cooked tang yuans in some soup and you're done!
Some cool stuff
a Chinese recipe that is usually made during the Lantern Festival, which is the 15th day of the Lunar New Year which was February 26th this year (woops was a little late)
traditionally was a big project requiring a lot of hard labor, including hand grinding the rice and kneading fat into a paste, and would take at least a couple days to prepare
tang yuan traditionally uses pork or beef suet, which is a hard fat found around the loins and kidneys
this recipe uses butter since it's a lot easier to find, but a really tasty vegan alternative is coconut oil, which has the downside? of making it taste a little coconut-y
caster sugar, which is a superfine sugar that is different from powdered sugar, gives the best texture for the filling, but it still tastes really good with regular sugar
the korean grandma at my work said it was good so I can officially flex
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