SNACKS - Sweet Potato Balls 番薯担

By Aemelia

Ingredients

• Filling suggestion:
• 1 sweet potato (both the orange or yellow fleshed variety can be used. In fact, I had mixed both together)
• approx. 1 cup glutinous rice flour
• white sesame seeds
• red bean paste, or roasted crushed peanuts tossed with sugar, or lotus paste or yam paste or black sesame paste etc.

Details

Adapted from fangie2000.blogspot.com

Preparation

Step 1

Boil the sweet potato in boiling water until it's soft. Peel and mash the flesh.

When it's cool enough, start to knead the sweet potato into a dough by adding the flour. Add the flour slowly, until you get the consistency you fancy. It may be possible to not use flour at all, if you prefer a full sweet potato texture.

I've seen some recipes adding sugar to the dough, but I find sweet potato sweet enough. Furthermore, the filling is also sweet. So sugar is quite redundant, I feel.

Flour your hands so that the dough doesn't stick to them. Pinch some dough and roll into roughly a ping pong ball size. Flatten and put fillings inside. Roll back into a ball. Repeat until you've finished the dough.

Roll the balls with sesame seeds.

Heat oil for deep frying. Fry them until golden brown. They are very nice when eaten warm, freshly fried. But you can also snack on them when they're cooled.

Tips:
If you're like me and don't like deep frying, make smaller balls. Instead of filling a pan full of oil, use a wok, add about 3mm depth of oil for frying the sweet potato balls, just have to turn them on all sides manually until all sides are cooked and golden brown. Soak up excess oil on kitchen paper.