Enjoy a Slightly Different Lantern Festival With This Peanut Butter Tangyuan Recipe

汤圆 Tāngyuán – glutinous rice dumplings generally made with a sweet and slightly savory black sesame filling – are a staple at most Chinese dinner tables come Lantern Festival.

The holiday is celebrated on the 15th day of the first lunar month and falls (fittingly enough) on this coming Tuesday, Feb 15, marking the official end of the Lunar New Year period.

To make this Lantern Festival special, why not try something a little different with your tangyuan this year? Like this recipe for peanut butter tangyuan, provided by the folks over at NAKED Nut Butter, a Beijing-based expat-run nut butter brand.

Tangyuan Ingredients

Glutinous rice flour
Hot water
NAKED peanut butter

Soup Ingredients

Brown Sugar
Ginger

Method

1. Add hot water to glutinous rice flour in a 1:2 ratio, mixing until it forms a dough.

2. Roll the dough into a long, narrow log shape

3. Evenly divide the dough into 10 pieces (or however many tangyuan you would like to make)

4. Take a piece of dough and using your hand, roll into a ball and flatten.

5. Take a small teaspoon of cold NAKED peanut butter and place in the center of the dough.

6. Carefully pull the sides of the dough to enclose the peanut butter.

7. Boil water with brown sugar and ginger slices, to taste.

8. Put the tangyuan in the boiling soup, cook for 4 to 6 minutes.

Finally, serve up in a bowl and enjoy!

READ: Beijing's Winter Vegetables: Three Sweet Potato Recipes You Can Follow At Home

Images courtesy of NAKED Nut Butter