Fried Sesame Balls- A Thai Snack

One of my favorite parts of our "tour of the world", is the food. I love that we eat foods that originate from our country of interest for the month. If you have been reading since the beginning, then you know that we used to only eat the food at our end of the month celebration, but when we began our 2012 tour I asked each member (including myself) of our family what they'd like to do differently and Preston and I both said, "More food!" So since then, we have added a day where we also make a snack. This is great, because we get to eat some of the food, without spending a long day in the kitchen (as I usually do for our end of the month celebration). I try to choose snacks that are easy, one that my kids can do most of, or at least a good part of it and it won't take too much time. This time, we chose to make Fried Sesame Balls. I followed this (<<< Don't forget: that blue word is the link) recipe that I found online and was delighted by how easy it was and how short the time between pulling out the ingredients to popping one of these in my mouth was.

The first step is always wash hands, but I didn't bother with the photos :). The next step is almost always Eliana going first, because we have all learned that she is far too stubborn to try to do it any other way and Aiden always gets a turn, so if he has to wait 2 minutes to avoid and 20 minute battle, he's down with that (thankfully). 

Adding a little over 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour. 

Adding 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. We also added 1 tablespoon of shortening and mixed that in well. 

In a separate bowl whisking one egg white.

Whisking the egg white with roughly 1/8 of a cup of sugar.

After the mixing was done, we lost Aiden for the final steps. He doesn't like to get his hands into it, besides, once the two bowls of ingredients are mixed together, the mixture has to sit for 5 minutes, that's a long time for a seven year old to wait. Eliana went to play with him during the wait time, but came back when it was time for the next step. 

While we did this, I had a pot of oil heating up on the stove. 

Rolling the dough into balls and rolling them in sesame seeds.

Being goofy while daddy snaps some pictures. 

Ready to be fried. 

These took only a few minutes to cook and I tested one by puling it out and cutting it in half after 2 or 3 minutes and it was perfect. 

The test part 1. 

The test part 2.

And the verdict is...

Thumbs up! They're good!

Before making these, I anticipated that they would taste like donuts. The texture was exactly like donuts. The flavor was a bit more salty than sweet, but I can admit here that I forgot to add the salt when I was supposed to and added it after we added the shortening, not before, which I am sure effected the flavor as we couldn't mix it properly. This was a quick and easy snack that was yummy, even if the flavor may not have been what we expected. Despite the fact that it is fried and that we know fried food is not healthy for us, we will very likely be making and eating these again. We have even talked about modifying them and adding cinnamon (and maybe a little more sugar). I don't know how authentic it will be then, but at least it originated in Thailand.