Taro and Sweet Potato Balls Dessert (九份芋圓)

Taro and Sweet Potato Balls Dessert is a classic Taiwanese treat that will indulge every sugar craving! Each ball is cooked until perfectly chewy for a satisfying bite. It’s made using natural ingredients so you know exactly what goes in it!

Make it the ultimate sweet tooth’s dream by pairing it with your favorite mix of homemade or instant grass jelly, coconut jelly or black sesame tang yuan!

Delicious and nutritious in any season

If there’s a dessert that I can eat at any time of the day and feel absolutely no regret (yes, at 2AM too!), it’s a generous serving of Taro and Sweet Potato Balls. In fact, it’s not just at any time of the day that I’ll happily eat it, but I can also enjoy it at any time of the year.

Serve me a hot bowl on a cool Winter’s night or serve it during a Summer’s heatwave topped with shaved ice and I’ll be beyond happy.

I’ll have to admit that I’ve made countless trips to dessert stores to curb my Taiwanese sweets cravings. But let me tell you this: once you start making it at home, you’ll never want to go back.

Homemade is so much better because you can add as many hand-rolled balls as you want! Seriously, there’s no limit!

I won’t tell you how many I’ve had…

Plus, there’s no added food coloring so you know the vibrant orange and purple is all natural. Just take a look in the picture below and you’ll see what I mean!

Why this recipe works

• Using fresh ingredients means you get ALL the vitamins and antioxidants to keep your body healthy.
• Using tapioca starch adds a fun chewiness to the each rolled piece. Sweet potato starch is traditionally used, but it can be difficult to come by. So we substitute it with tapioca starch, an ingredient easily found in Asian groceries.
• Stirring sugar over the warm pieces gives extra flavor without using food coloring or preservatives!

What you’ll need

For the hand rolled balls

About the starch

Taro and Sweet Potato Balls are traditionally used making sweet potato starch for that signature QQ texture (a.k.a. the al dente of some Asian dishes). This ingredient can be difficult to come by, so we use tapioca starch.

For the red bean

About the beans

Use red adzuki red beans for this recipe, which can be found in most Asian groceries. They’ll be sold dry and have a red-purple color before being cooked.

If you don’t plan to use them all, they’re great stored for later use with recipes like Red Bean Dessert Soup (红豆汤) or Lotus Root and Pork Soup (蓮藕汤).

For the ginger syrup

About the sugar

We use rock sugar for our sugar water to get a light ginger syrup, but you can certainly use other types depending on your preference or what’s available to you.

If you prefer a deeper sweetness like you would get with Vietnamese Glutinous Rice Balls (Chè Trôi Nước), you can use palm sugar instead.

How to make this dessert

Hand Rolled Balls

Set up your steamer and steam the vegetable slices for 30 minutes per batch. If you have a larger steamer, you can steam more at the same time.

Mash the steamed taro slices using a fork or a potato masher followed by the steamed sweet potatoes.

Pour 100g tapioca starch into the mashed taro along with 1 tsp sugar and knead until a dough is formed. It should be firm enough to stand as a ball and not too soft that it sticks to your hands.

Note: The amount of tapioca starch needed will vary for each dough because every root vegetable will have different levels of moisture.

If you find the dough too dry, knead in 1 tbsp water at a time until you have the desired consistency. Using less starch will also mean a softer ball while more starch will yield a chewier ball and a milder flavor.

Repeat the previous step with the mashed purple and orange sweet potatoes except using higher amounts of tapioca starch as they naturally contain more moisture.

Take small dough handfuls and roll them into logs 1.5 cm (0.6″) in diameter. Use a knife to divide the log into 1.5 cm (0.6″) pieces.

Dust the balls in tapioca starch to stop them from sticking to each other.

Bring a pot of water to boil and fill a large bowl with room temperature water. When boiling, put a handful of raw pieces in to cook until they float.

Continue to let them cook for another 2 minutes before transferring them into the water bowl.

Scoop the balls out and toss them in the remaining sugar, 1 tbsp per batch (or to taste).

Red bean

Soak the red beans in water for 3 hours. This will make the cooking process much faster.

Drain the soaking water from the beans then cook them in a pot with the rock sugar and new water for 30 minutes or until soft.

Scoop the beans out to use as a topping. Optional: You can keep the leftover red bean water for your dessert soup.

Ginger syrup

Boil the water, rock sugar and ginger for 30 minutes.

FAQs

How do I assemble my dessert?

Fill your bowl up with as many toppings as you like, then pour the ginger syrup in. How much you add is entirely up to you.

If you’d like extra flavor, you can even add the red bean soup!

How do I choose the right purple sweet potato?

Purple sweet potatoes come in three types:

• Purple skin with purple flesh
• Purple skin with white flesh
• White flesh with purple skin

To find the one for this recipe, look for any with purple flesh. That way, your purple potato balls will have a natural purple color.

Tips for the most amazing dessert every time!

• Check the sweet potato’s flesh color. Look for the larger separated pieces and check their exposed ends. Their ends will reveal the color of the flesh when it’s cooked.
• Make sure the balls are warm when getting tossed in sugar. The heat will turn the sugar into a glaze.
• Vary the amount of tapioca flour for the taro, orange and purple sweet potatoes depending on their starch content. As a rule of thumb, taro will need the least, purple sweet potato a bit more and orange sweet potato the most.
• Cook the balls, red bean and ginger syrup all at once. This will help you save time.
• Presoak the adzuki red beans. Doing so for 3 hours will cut down on cooking time.

Make it a feast

You can’t enjoy dessert without a delicious dinner spread to complete it! Try these:

• Taiwanese Bao (Gua Bao 割包) is a great way to start the meal.
• Line the table up with a plate of Braised Chicken Wings and Mushrooms in Oyster Sauce and our lightly tangy Tomato Tofu with Minced Pork.
• Complement a simple palette with a Winter Melon Stir Fry.
• Lead up to dessert with Grandma’s best Chinese Watercress Soup (西洋菜汤)!

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This post was originally published on 1/4/20 and updated with tips and FAQs in October 2022.

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