I should really learn one day that being lazy does not tend to produce the results that I would like to see. Every once in awhile you may get lucky and come up with something miraculous, pretending that it was creative genius all along. But on the flip side, things also have a very good chance of going awry.... poor poor "sesame seed balls"Sesame seed balls are a common thing in the Chinese culture. Especially around Chinese New Year they are made with much zeal, popping up everywhere in dim sum. Traditionally they are made from a combination of hot water, brown sugar and rice flour. They are stuffed with red bean paste, rolled in sesame seeds and then fried. The result is a delicious, albeit very unhealthy dessert.
Because of the recent turning of the Chinese New Year to the year of the Rat I decided that these little nuggets of goodness would be a delicious and interesting thing to make. And this is where my problem started: I was going to try to make them using things only from the regular grocery store because I was too lazy to drive over to a Chinese grocery store. There was no red bean paste and so I thought that I could use Nutella, peanut butter, and maybe use up some strawberries that were at home. Maybe it could have been an interesting twist on a traditional treat. There was no rice flour so I decided that trying out soy flour for the first time may have been appropriate. How bad could they really get? Right? Wrong.
After spending a hefty amount of time making the dough, rolling each piece out, stuffing each piece, rolling each in sesame (and later poppy because I ran out of sesame) seeds, and then frying them, I figured out my mistakes. The strawberry compote that I made didn't match well with the sesame seeds. The balls really need to be deep fried instead of pan fried like I tried to do. The poppy seeds weren't th right thing to roll balls of dough in. The peanut butter and Nutella may have been good with a different flour. And oohhhh the flour! That was the worst choice of all. Soy flour has way too high of a protein content to be used in such a manner, staying dense instead of puffing out like they are supposed to. And soy flour? Come on! I know that soy products usually lend a fairly distinct flavor.
I had to throw them all out, not wanting another unsuspecting soul to stumble across them and take a bite, completely unaware of the impending doom. Sure they were very pretty, I had a fun time taking pictures of them, but they were a disaster that made the house smell like grease for the next couple of days. Moral of the story: don't be lazy! At least if you do, think it through first. I know about protein contents of flours and how that will affect texture, I just didn't think about it.
Sometimes things don't work out the way you my have wanted. That's okay. Chalk it up to a learning experience and try again. You can't win them all.
