Bánh Cam – Sesame Balls Recipe

If you’re looking for a dessert that is more savoury Deep-fried food that is crispy will always deliver. This sesame-filled ball recipe (Vietnamese banh cam) is a great snack that will satisfy your cravings. It has crisp white glutinous, golden rice and packed with sweet mung beans and coated with the white seeds of sesame.

My mom was quite the raising machine. As as if the raising of 9 of her children was not enough of a burden she also had her hand in the care of all grandchildren too. Between cleaning up the mess and resolving our fights, it seemed that she never missed an inch when it came to cooking.

In the very rare occasions when there was no cooking on the stove, our grandma often fed us a mixture of sesame seeds roasted as well as salt (muoi me) over rice. It sounds like a peasant meal, you think? A delicious peasant meal. It was also the time I got my first taste of sesame seeds.

Does anyone know where sesame seeds originate are from (Any Mitch Hedberg lovers?)? These tiny teardrop-shaped seeds are the basis of the snack we’ll make today, a banh cam (sesame balls).

The term banh cam literally translates to “orange cake” because these balls are shaped like oranges, and not because there’s real oranges inside.

What’s the flavor?

There’s an amazing harmony in banh cam. The shell’s exterior is warm golden brown with Sesame seed white. The outside has a pleasing crispness from the cooking. On the opposite side of the surface, you will find the soft and the glutinous rice dough that is springy and the sweet the mung bean. People who love banh cam be quite picky about the balanced between crisp and chewy.

Origins in Vietnam

While they appear identical There are some distinctions between banh cams in to the South in comparison to banh run that comes from the North. Both types are available all over the world, but. My parents have shared the distinctions between these sweets that are fried in their home country:

North Vietnam – Banh Ran

Northerners refer to it as banh ran*, also known as “fried cake”. They are made using a Jasmine essence of flowers to give an appealing scent. A sweet drizzle of sugar on these sweets is available according to the seller.

Another difference between the north and the south is that when they’re covered with sugar this dough recipe is created using sweet rice flour, and not sesame seeds, rice flour or potatoes.

South Vietnam – Banh Cam

In this blog I create this with this post in the Southern style. There isn’t any flavor of flowers in this recipe. The most well-known flavor that is added to the mung beans filling is using the addition of vanilla extract.

It is only in the South can you find fresh crushed coconut in the filling and it will be different depending on the vendor. If you decide to add the coconut into your recipes be sure to do yourself a favor and make sure to use freshly coconut that has been shredded!

See more: Chè Ba Màu – A dessert of south Vietnam

Shaped By Necessity

In many instances, money is the main factor in how things go. Potatoes are added to keep banh cams from popping up in the fryer. As potatoes were scarce (expensive) during the war in Vietnam and therefore sweet potatoes were utilized instead. This added sweetness, making it possible for the cook to reduce costs by cutting down on sugar as well.

In the case of the mung bean filling, my grandparents say there was no concern from snackers or cooks about any particular detail, like the fact that the ball of Mung Bean shakes in the middle or it doesn’t. There’s more air in the filling when you reduce the filling and it’s likely that cooks used that method to increase their daily food supply.

Making the Mung beans

Drip the dried Mung beans for at least two hours. There’s two ways to make them hydrated. The fastest method is to put hot water in the pot to soak them on the counter in the kitchen and drain them, then refill the hot water two times over two hours.

The slower and less complicated method involves adding warm water over the beans and then let it cool, then transfer to the refrigerator overnight.

After hydrating remove then cook. Steaming is the easiest method to cook it because you leave it on a medium-high heat and don’t worry about stirring or the amount of water you’ve put in.

You can cook it in the stove and in rice cookers like you would cook rice but it’s more challenging to get it properly, and you might have to throw away a lot of beans that stick to the pot.

They’re done when they’re no longer crunchyand easy to mix between your fingers for approximately 30 minutes.

How to Serve

They were typically offered by vendors for a snack. Locals were rarely able to buy more than one. They could be smaller than an orange-large enough to satisfy one’s desire for dessert.

It’s fun to make banh cam into a disk prior to eating it, but I also enjoy making them into bite-sized poppers as well. They are delicious with tea or coffee.

Do you know Hanoi egg coffee?

Tips to make sesame balls successful

It took quite a bit of experimentation with the recipe in order to arrive at this recipe. The adjustments were made in order to improve the crispness of the shell, as well as to create a darker brown color. The sugar content is modified to ensure that it isn’t overly sweet.

Ingredients for filling Adjusting the sugar to make the filling is simple but it can alter your texture as well as color when you alter too much to the dough’s outer. I’ve tried the mung beans filling using vanilla too however I would prefer not to add vanilla.

Ingredients for the Shell Also, I’ve tried boiling potatoes as a substitute for flakes but it didn’t go similarly. It may have to be related to finding the right water level however, there was more success with potato flakes. There are reputable local vendors that use boiled potatoes to make the flakes with banh cam. They are great.

Preparing ahead and storage Prior to rolling and cooking the dough, it’s kept in the refrigerator for a few days perfectly. If you don’t eat many at a time, you should fry fresh batches. After you’ve fried sesame balls, they’ll stay good for up to a couple of days. To warm them up, place them in a toaster oven or fry them again in the cooking oil of neutral.

What is the composition of sesame balls? out of?

Vietnamese banh cam is mixture of a glutinous flour as well as regular rice flour and a wheat flour crisp outer layer that has mochi-like soft and sweet Mung bean inside.

What are sesame-flavored balls like?

Sesame balls are crispy and roast sesame outside and they give you a sweet mung beans taste when you bite into.

Chinese Sesame Balls?

It is the Chinese version of sesame balls looks quite similar. I have seen them all the times at dim sum-style carts. The fillings are typically paste of black bean paste or lotus seeds. The recipes I have seen usually have more water to make the filling, so it’s more like an emulsion.

If you take a bite of the sesame ball you’ll typically find it more broken as well as stuck on the walls of the outer shell , compared to the consistency that we’re looking with in our recipe. The less dry version of this recipe typically retains the filling’s form, and you may hear it shake inside.