Rolling Tang Yuan Balls at Chinese New Year

last week I had this random dream where my ears detached themselves and transformed into angry tang yuan balls and started whizzing around my head until my mum walked in and vacuumed them up

lol

these are tang yuan balls

Tang yuan are little balls of pink, green and white chewy goodness, served in a traditional teacup with sweet syrup! These ones were about to be offered to the sky god to eat in celebration of chinese new year.

They are made of glutinous rice mixed with a bit of water - a bit like mini mochi balls :)

You can also get them from the freezer section at the local asian grocery store - those ones are BIGGER and have sweet black sesame paste inside.

The green tang yuan dough Sausage Worm

When you make them at home, they're deceptively hard to roll into nice round balls
The first ones I rolled came out progressively as pancakes, baguettes, oblongs and eggs, until mum taught me the Secret Tang Yuan Rolling Technique:

You must put three of the sausage pieces on your palm, then use your other palm to roll lightly in a circular motion. I found three tang yuan to be about right but if you have big hands you can do four at the same time, for max tang yuan rolling efficiency!

I tried to master four and they kept getting stuck together :(

Breaking off tang yuan pieces from the sausage worm

The Secret Tang Yuan Rolling Technique (actually really simple haha)

An Army of Tang Yuan Balls

When I was a kid I used to think that different coloured balls were different flavours
But nah not true: if you add nothing to them they are white (like the fat supermarket black sesame balls), but we added exciting pandan food colouring :)

'What! But pandan IS a flavour!' you may be shouting

But~~ pandan colouring is super strong, so you only add the tiniest bit - our little bottles of deep green and purple (purple pandan!) never seem to end

More tang yuan in syrup

Tang yuan is best enjoyed at a luxurious pace
Chew thoughtfully and pause often to admire the pretty colours