Taro paste is a mildly sweet and nutty filling traditionally made of three essential ingredients: steamed or boiled taro root, sugar, vegetable oil and, optionally, coconut milk.
We love to use it in various Asian and Western treats due to its unique vanilla-like sweetness.
Making this sweet purple filling paste is relatively easy at home. Once you've made it, you can use it for various desserts, including taro mochi, tang yuan, mooncakes, bubble tea, and other Chinese taro paste desserts like orh nee.
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Ingredients
To make taro paste for desserts, you'll need the following ingredients.
- Taro root
- Sugar
- Vegetable oil
- Coconut milk (optional)
If you're making this for bubble tea, skip the vegetable oil and coconut milk. We recommend checking out our full recipe for making taro paste for boba.
What Is Taro?
Taro is a common starchy root plant used in many countries across Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It is a staple ingredient for both savoury and sweet dishes, and this sweet filling is widely used in dessert and pastry recipes.
When cooked, it releases a mild sweetness and has a potato-like texture. It also has a nutty tang, which makes it a favourite ingredient of cooks.
Due to the phenolic pigments, they give out a delightful light purple colour. However, real taro is not as purple as you see in bubble tea or other Chinese desserts.
If you like to get a vivid purple colour, we recommend adding 1 teaspoon of purple sweet potato powder mixed with 2-3 tablespoon of hot water to your mashed paste. Alternatively, add ½ a medium-sized fresh purple sweet potato to boil with your root vegetable.
Sugar
For our recipe, we recommend sticking to white granulated sugar, as brown sugar will add a noticeable toffee taste if you add too much. In general, avoid adding strong-scented sweeteners.
Vegetable Oil
We add vegetable oil to our dessert paste to keep it moist and have a thicker texture. It also helps it last longer compared to not adding any. Therefore, we don't recommend skipping this ingredient or reducing its amount.
For our recipe, we're using sunflower oil. However, you can use any neutral-flavoured vegetable oil. You should avoid using olive oil as its aroma is quite strong and unsuitable for making dessert pastes.
Coconut milk (Optional)
Although coconut milk is optional, adding this will give your dessert filling a creamy and thick texture.
Taro Paste Recipe
Ingredients
- 250 g taro root
- 4-8 tablespoon white sugar according to how sweet you would like it to be
- 50 ml vegetable oil
- ¼ cup coconut milk optional
Instructions
- Remove the skin of the root vegetable completely. This will ensure that the paste is smooth and silky.
- Chop the ground root into cubes and boil it on medium heat for 15 minutes or until soft. You can poke the cubes with a fork or chopsticks to check whether they break easily. Then drain the water.
- Once soft, use a fork or masher to mash the hot cubes into a smooth paste. You need to mash them while they are still hot, as they will harden once they cool down.
- Now, add the vegetable oil, sugar (and coconut milk, if you want) to the taro paste. Cook over medium to low heat while mixing.
- Stir the mixture for about 5 minutes until the ingredients mix into a consistent, smooth purple sweet dessert fillin
- Remove the pot from the stove and let it cool down. Make sure to chill the taro paste until room temperature before using.
Notes
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
Here are some variations to our recipe which you can try.
More Purple
If you want to make it look more purple, you can add purple sweet potato or ube powder to the paste. For 1 cup of purple sweet dessert filling, dissolve 1 teaspoon of purple sweet potato powder in 2-3 tablespoon of warm water. Then, mix the purple mixture over the taro paste until well combined.
It will not alter the flavour of the filling but will add a more vivid purple colour.
Using a blender
In some cases, it is difficult to mash the starchy root plant into a smooth paste, so use a blender to further smoothen the fliling.
Steaming taro
A rice cooker with a steamer function is a good trick for easily steaming the root vegetable. You can then immediately mash the ground root in the rice cooker.
You may add some pandan to the ground root during the steaming or boiling process. This would add a pandan aroma and green colour to the overall flavour of your sweet dessert filling.
No vegetable oil
Although our recipe uses vegetable oil, you may replace the oil portion with more coconut milk. This depends on how creamy you want your sweet purple filling to be and what you use it for.
No coconut milk
If you do not have coconut milk at hand, you may also replace it with whipped cream, butter, and condensed milk. The absence of coconut milk will slightly change its flavour. Do give it a try and decide on your preference.
Making taro paste for milk tea
The purple sweet filling for dessert is silkier and creamier, but it also contains more calories due to the addition of oil and coconut milk.
Our taro paste for boba milk tea is slightly different from the purple root paste we make for desserts. The boba version doesn't contain any oil or coconut milk. This is because you want the filling in bubble tea drinks to be light and creamy.
What Is Taro Paste Used For?
The sweet filling is a critical element of many Chinese snacks such as the mantou, nian gao and shaobing.
Many Asian bakeries use the sweet filling as a prime flavour in their pastries. An example is the taro paste bun or mooncakes, which can be found in many bakeries in China.
Meanwhile, the Japanese have devised taro as a filling for their supple rice cake dessert, the mochi.
Western cuisine has also embraced the sweet vegatablet filling as a component of its desserts and snacks. By mixing it with butter and cream, you can make a mildly nutty buttercream and whipped cream. These are suitable for adding to cakes as frosting.
We want to highlight that if you see the paste with a very vibrant purple colour, it may not be entirely accurate. Though this starchy plant, when cooked, has a purple colour, the natural hue is very light and not too vivid. Additional ingredients or colouring may have been added if the purple colour is solid.
Our recipe can also be used for other root vegetable dessert fillings such as chestnut, yams, or lotus.
How Long Can You Store Taro Paste?
Once prepared, you can store the filling in a sealed container in the fridge for 1 to 2 weeks. You may also freeze the blend, keeping it good for 1 to 2 months.
Make sure you defrost the puree to room temperature before reusing it.
Quick Teochew Dessert, Orh Nee (芋泥)
A quick Chinese dessert you could make after preparing the sweet filling is Orh Nee (芋泥). This traditional Teochew dessert is essentially sweet taro paste served with ginkgo nuts.
Popular amongst Chinese Singaporeans and Malaysians, this treat is easy to make once you have the sweet filling ready.
The steps are:
- Boil some ginkgo nuts until softened. Make sure the nuts are peeled and pitted before boiling.
- Scoop a desired amount of taro filling into a dessert bowl.
- Top the filling with a few pieces of softened ginkgo nuts and serve!
If desired, you can boil the ginkgo nuts with some pandan leaves and a bit of sugar. This would add an extra sweet tang to the nuts.
This dessert is suitable as a light treat after a meal or as a midday snack.
Riham
Can I replace the oil entirely with coconut milk?
Honest Food Talks
Yes you can 🙂
Widhi
This is such a great recipe! Tried this with boba tea and worked perfectly!
Milei
Ubamana
I can already think of so many recipes I'll use this in!
Eko
Iwa
Going to use this in my mooncake recipe!
Oaca
Enoila
Kelie
Was hoping to learn how to make this, after I read your article on Taro Mochi!
Thank you so much! <3