Taro Balls Recipe: A Traditional Taiwanese Dessert

Taro balls are a famous Taiwanese dessert, which you can certainly make at home to enjoy. This article explains what this dessert is and provides a tested recipe for you to try making it yourself!

Jump to:

• What is it?
• Calories
• How to enjoy
• Ingredients
• How to make Taro balls
• Cooking Tips
• How to Store
• Taro Ball and Sweet Potato Ball Recipe | Taiwanese Dessert
• Conclusion

What is it?

Taro balls may look grey or purple depending on the root vegetable used. Taste-wise, they are slightly sticky with a starchy flavour. 

They are also known as taro and sweet potato balls. That’s because this dessert commonly uses both taro (also known as dasheen) or sweet potato root vegetables. 

The former root plant is purplish, resulting in a purple-greyish hue when steamed. Hence, some people also call this dessert purple potato balls. Meanwhile, sweet potato produces a light orange hue when cooked. When served together, the colour balances each other providing aesthetically pleasing taro balls and sweet potatoes dessert.

Calories

Taro balls are approximately 150 calories alone without any soup. In other words, it requires about 25 minutes of cycling to burn off. 

However, many consider this traditional Taiwanese dessert a healthy treat. This is because it contains minimal added sugar and no added fat. 

How to enjoy

You can eat this traditional Tawinesse dessert hot or cold. Many Asian grandmothers recommend drinking a soothing ginger syrup taro ball soup regularly. Ginger is supposed to be good for warming the body and boosting vitality. Another way to eat it is over shaved ice, common in Asia where some parts of the continent can get hot in Summer. 

Generous helpings of the Taiwanese dessert are layered over thin toppings of shaved iced to make a nice cold treat. You will also see the taro balls in coconut milk, which is good for balancing the flavour of creamy coconut milk. 

You may also have seen the dessert in boba tea. What is the difference between taro balls versus boba? The former has a melt in your mouth texture. This difference is because the root vegetables used to make these desserts are different. Many bubble tea shops usually use cassava to make the boba in your boba tea, which results in a springy texture. 

Grass jelly and sweet condensed milk are other toppings that are usually added. Check out our Grass Jelly recipe to make a cooling base for your desserts. 

Ingredients

To make taro balls, you will need dasheen, sweet potato and tapioca starch. Look out for peeled vegetables, as they are easier to handle than dicing them yourself. We also recommend that you buy purple sweet potato with purple flesh so that the final dessert is a brilliant hue of purple. You can buy these at any Asian supermarket. If you can’t find sweet potato starch, you can also try corn flour. 

If you use tapioca flour instead of sweet potato starch, you will get a slightly chewier, elastic texture that you can sink your teeth into. On the other hand, sweet potato starch produces a much softer product! 

How to make Taro balls

To make taro balls, just steam diced dasheen. Smash all of them and add sugar into the mixture. 

Next, add tapioca flour, then knead to form a spherical shape. You can add water if the mix is too dry and flour when the mixture gets too wet. 

Finally, boil them in hot water for a few minutes, and serve hot or cold based on your preference. 

Cooking Tips

To make your taro balls successfully, you need to note that more flour means that the final product will be chewier. A tip is that dasheen has the most starch content while sweet potato has less. 

So, the flour to root vegetable ratio will differ depending on what root vegetable you decide to use. You can try a 1: 2 balance of mixing flour to the root vegetable, to begin with. However, take note that adding too much flour will make the dessert crack, so adjust accordingly. 

Another tip is to boil the root vegetables for about 15 to 20 minutes to make them soft. 

Lastly, to achieve a smooth round shape, roll the flour mixture into a log of 2cm in diameter. Then cut them out and dust the dessert generously with flour. They do not have to be perfectly spherical to look delicious! 

How to Store

While this dessert is best eaten fresh, you can freeze the dessert in an airtight container filled with baking paper. 

So how do you cook frozen taro balls? First, you need to boil them in a large pot and stir until they come to the surface. After a few minutes of boiling, strain them and transfer them to ice-cold water. 

Wondering how the whole process looks like? Panda Gourmand on Youtube has an excellent video recipe showing the whole process of making the Taiwanese Tri-color dessert!

Taiwanese Tri-color Taro Balls ｜台湾三色芋圆❗️

Conclusion

You can serve this easy to create Taiwanese dessert on a hot day or cold night. We hope you like this recipe, and please follow us on Instagram @honestfoodtalks for more Asian desserts!