soymilk rice ball dessert [紅豆草莓抹茶豆奶白玉]

Sticky rice balls are commonly made with glutinous rice flour mixed with plain water and either cooked in water, or steamed in a steamer. truthfully speaking, they taste good made with water, but wouldn't it be nice if we also added a little more richness to the original aroma of rice? So this japanese stlye dessert was originall made with milk, but since i only had soymilk and soymilk has the additional scent of soybeans, i decided to give it a shot. I paired this dessert up with redbean (Azuki bean) paste, green tea ice cream, and fresh strawberries along with condensed milk drizzled over the top. It tasted absolutely phenomenal, so I decided to share it with all of you. Here we go!

Materials:

A. condensed milk
B. redbean (Azuki bean) paste (maybe home made or commercially available too)
C. Soymilk (may be substituted with milk)
D. fresh chopped strawberries
E. glutinous rice flour
    green tea (matcha) ice cream (not shown)

Directions:

1. take a small portion of the glutinous rice flour and mix it with some soymilk until it turns into a smooth piece of dough (it should not stick to your hands). roll the dough into a ball then press down onto it so it more or less resembles a pancake (the thinner shape allows for faster cooking of the dough).

2. boil some hot water in a small pot. once the water has come to boil drop in the litle piece of dough made in step 1 and allow the dough to cook in the hot water. The dough should start off sinking to the bottom of the pot, as it cooks the dough will gradually rise to the surface. Once it has floated to the surface, allow it to cook for another 30seconds to 1 minute to enusre that the dough is fully cooked.

3. remove the dough from the hot water pot (do not dispose of the water since we will need it again later). add the remainder of the glutinous rice flour to a mixing bowl and drop the cooked piece of dough in. add more soymilk to the mixing bowl in small amounts to ensure u do not make the dough too water. mix together the cooked piece of dough, remaining rice flour, and the added soymilk. Note: be careful as the dough may still be very hot!. It is natural for the dough to feel sticky and stick to your fingers in this step. the stickiness comes from the piece of cooked dough. The cooked dough is an important determining factor in the chewiness of the final product so don't omit this step!

4. once mixed into a smooth piece of dough, break the dough in to large marble sized pieces and roll into a ball. these balls will feel somewhat sticky so coat them with some more rice flour on the outside. Then use your thump and press down the middle of the balls in your plam so they form an indentation in the center. As a biologist, I would describe the shape you're trying to produce here as looking like a red blood cell.

5. bring to boil, a pot of water. you may reuse the pot of water previously used to boil the small piece of dough, but make sure the water is boiling first before you drop the piece of rice dough you just made into the pot. allow the dough to cook until it floats up, then allow it to cook an additional 30 seconds to 1 minute.

6. once the dough is cooked, remove them promptly from the boiling water and drop them into a pot/bowl of cold (prefably ice cold) water. This will add more chewiness to them. allow the dough to soak in the hot water until they are cool.

7. place the cooked rice balls in a small serving cup or bowl and pour soymilk until it its 3/4 the way to the top of the dough placed in the cup.

8. to add the finishing touches, lay some strawberries on top, scoop 1 scoop of green tea ice cream and lay some red bean paste on top of the ice cream. finally drizzle some condensed milk over the top.

There you have your home made soymilk rice ball dessert!

this recipe is pretty easy as it does not demand very many ingredients or too much experience in mixing and combining ingredients, it is relatively easy to succeed and of course is delicious!

that's my little experiment for today!

have fun in the kitchen ;)

-Ney