When Chocolate Meets Tangyuan

Heart-shape decorations hanging everywhere, cafes selling special drinks with romantic names, radios playing love songs, it was hard to ignore that Friday was Valentine’s Day. But if you had taken a look at the lunar New Year calendar, you would find out that Friday was also Lantern Festival, a traditional Chinese festival to celebrate the first full moon after lunar New Year. Every traditional Chinese festival relates to a unique traditional Chinese food: dumpling for New Year’s Day, moon cake for Moon Festival… The food for Lantern Festival is tangyuan, a sweet, ball-shaped dessert that symbolizes family reunion and togetherness. Though this year I couldn’t go back home and celebrate Lantern Festival with my family, I still decided to make some tangyuans as a treat to myself. But since Valentine’s Day and Lantern Festival were on the same day this year, I thought maybe I could change the traditional tangyuan recipe a little bit and made it special in order to celebrate both of these holidays!

A tradition tangyuan recipe from The Gumdrop Button

Chinese Black Sesame Dumplings (Tang Yuan)

Author: The Gumdrop Button

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 25 dumplings

Ingredients

Black Sesame Filling

·       ½ cup black sesame seeds, toasted

·       ¼ cup granulated sugar

·       ¼ cup butter, softened

Dough

·       2½ cups sweet or glutinous rice flour

Ginger Syrup

·       3 slices of ginger

·       rock sugar

Instructions

Black Sesame Filling

1.     Grind the sesame seeds into a fine powder (a coffee grinder works well). A paste should form from the ground sesame seeds. Mix with the sugar and butter.

2.     Roll the mixture into small balls, about ½ in diameter. Freeze on a plastic wrap-lined cookie sheet for at least 1 hour, until the balls have solidified.

Dough

1.     Mix the flour with 1 cup cold water, until a soft dough is formed. Knead together until smooth. Keep covered until ready to use.

2.     Take a small piece of dough, flour lightly, and pat into a round disk. Place the sesame seed ball in the centre, and gently pinch and roll the dough around the ball. You should not be able to see the sesame through the dough. Add more dough if needed.

3.     Once all the Tang Yuan have been formed, cook immediately or freeze on a plastic wrap-lined cookie sheet.

Ginger Syrup

1.     In a medium pot, bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add the ginger slices and rock sugar, to taste. Cook for 5 minutes, then drop in the Tang Yuan. Maintain at a gentle boil. They will be ready once they are translucent and have floated to the top.

2.     Serve with the ginger syrup.

So, after making a few traditional black sesame tangyuans, I used milk chocolate balls as the filling, put them into the glutinous rice flour dough and rolled them into perfect spheres. I was not sure if this innovation was going to be a successful one, but it turned out to be great! After cooking the tangyuans in boiling water, the chocolate ball inside had melted, and with a gentle bite, you could enjoy the perfect combination of the moist hot chocolate lava and the sticky texture of glutinous rice.

It says on the Internet that it will be another nineteen years until Valentine’s Day and Lantern Festival meets again, but I am sure by that time, I would still make chocolate tangyuan for the special day.

-Guess which one has chocolate filling-