Ingredients
While tangyuan was originally a food that people would consume during festivals, it has become a dessert consumed year-round rather than simply a festival food. For instance, tangyuan is traditionally in white color. Yet, in order to cater to consumers’ needs and changing tastes, dessert specialty shops create new flavors or colors of tangyuan by substituting the traditional filling with chocolate, mashed potato and pumpkin paste. Thus, tangyuan has already evolved into a dessert that is consumed by Chinese from time to time throughout the year and is no longer limited to festivals.
In both filled and unfilled tangyuan, the main ingredient is glutinous rice flour. For filled tangyuan, the filling can be either sweet or savoury. Northern variations mix sesame, peanuts, sweet bean paste and place them into bamboo baskets with rice flour, sprinkle water continuously on the rice flour to form the fillings and form round balls. Southern variations are typically larger, and are made by wrapping the filling into sticky rice flour wrapping and crumpling them into balls.
Sweet fillings can be:
- A piece of cut sugarcane rock candy
- Sesame paste (ground black sesame seeds mixed with sugar and lard) - the most common filling
- Red bean paste (Azuki bean paste)
- Chopped peanuts (or peanut butter) and sugar
Read more about this topic: Tangyuan (food)
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