I’m still not too sure whether Tangyuen is eaten during the Mid Autumn Festival (中秋節) alongside mooncakes to celebrate the full moon. Tāngyuán is a Chinese dessert made from glutinous rice flour. The glutinous rice flour is mixed with a small amount of water to form balls and is then cooked and served in boiling water, usually with a sweet sesame or peanut filling in the centre. I used a white sesame filling this time.
I improvised on the recipe, and it turns out I used waaay too little sugar. I have a bad habit of making all my recipes low cal. What’s the fun in that?
Filling: Using a mortar and pestle, grind seasame seeds to a powder. Add sugar (add a lot more than I did!) and continue grinding. Then I added sesame powder – at this point you can add a little water to make the filling ‘pastey’.
The perfect glutinous rice flour to water ratio is around 3 cups rice flour to 1.5 (and a little bit more) water. I boiled my water with a few pieces of chinese rock sugar to sweeten it first. (you can also add food colouring as well, if you want, say, pink tang yuens) Pour the hot water into the flour and start stirring until it starts to stick together loosely. At this point, dust your hands with flour and start kneading. Knead for about 5 mins – continually dusting with flour. Glutinous rice flour is very sticky to work with. Pack it into a large ball and leave for 20 minutes under a damp tea towel.
Pinch a small ball of dough, roll between your palms to form a ball and flatten it into a disk around .8cm thick. Poke the centre slightly with your index finger, and spoon your sesame filling in the middle. Pinch the dough back together evenly with the filling in the middle, and re-roll into a ball between your palms.
Now repeat it a gazillion times – if you have a large family to feed. Store each finished tangyuen under a damp tea towel so it doesn’t dry up. You have to work very quickly as the dough will not be smooth as soon as it starts to dry.
Boil half a pot of water, add glutinous rice wine and rock sugar to taste, and add your tongyuen. It will all sink to the bottom at first, but as soon as they float up to the top, it is ready to serve!
The result? The tangyuen was amazing – but the filling could be sweeter! We forgot to take photos… so here is one I found which is very similar:
You can be creative with your fillings – red bean, green tea, choc peanut, cherry blossom?
Instead of serving them in a sweet soup, you can also roll them in seasame powder to make mochi.
you made it from scratch?!! where did you find the time? good lord woman, is there anything you CAN’T do? they look yum. im partial to the peanut filling myself mmmm
Nice! Looks Terrific. Good tutorial! =D
Ohhhhhh, that looks yummy *drools*
mmmm… i didn’t like ‘em as a kid, but liked ‘em more as i got older =)
i miss those!!..sure looks good about now..Mmm
those look good! probably eat a large bowlful of them!
i love “lui sah tang yuan”. where do you get the peanut stuff tho & what does it say on the bag “peanut filling for tang yuan”?
i made some last week. OM NOM NOM NOM peanut butter
@CaKaLusa - one day, we will be able to rub our balls together.
ah..the plain ones with nothing inside are equally as good…could eat them all day.
now im gonna go make some…ginger and rock sugar….ah so soothing.
Reminds me of home…
Peanut or sesame, either will do ^^
tong yuan is usually eaten during another festival, another I don’t remember which one at the moment. moon cake is for mid autumn festival.
u can make this ? really?
its greatttt when you cook them in jio niang (rice wine with rice in it)
my grandmother makes this all the time! i should give her your recipe! ;D
oh man that looks delicious!
i should try making it.
when i was young my mother would make these for me when i was sick. they were delicious albeit even if they were the frozen kind.
yum! my grandma used to make me those.