sticky rice balls with peanuts

Since we got back from our two-month long culinary journey through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, we've been making and eating meals inspired by (southeast) asian cuisine more often than ever. Also, they now taste more authentic than ever before because we learned a lot about ingredients and food preparation from the local people (and there is plenty more to be learned!). Yesterday, after having vegan version of tom yam soup for the main course, it was only natural to have fried sticky rice balls for the dessert, right? Ok, ok, these actually very much resemble "jian dui", a traditional chinese dessert, but we ate a lot of this type of desserts in Thailand, so I still connect them with thai cuisine. Although I am not a fan of fried food at all, and would skip it probably 99,4 % of the time, there are some dishes where I can justify frying for the sake of brilliant taste and texture. Sticky rice balls are definitely one of those cases.

what/
1 cup glutinous rice flour
2/5 - 1/2 cup water*
3-4 tbsp coconut sugar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/3 cup natural peanut butter

*the more water you add, the softer the rice balls will be; softer dough will also be more difficult to handle because of the stickiness. These ones on the pictures were made with 1/2 cup water and I loved the texture and feel (crispy from the outside and slightly gooey from the inside), but next time I will make them thicker, more like the ones we ate as street food in Thailand.

how/
Mix glutinous rice flour with coconut sugar and bicarbonate soda. Bring water to a boil and pour it into the bowl with flour mixture. Mix it with a spoon until it has cooled down enough to be handled with hands. Knead the dough for some time and let it sit for and hour wraped or closed to retain moisture. In the meantime, roll the peanut butter into small balls. Mine were around 1,3 cm in diameter, and I used a jar of natural peanut butter in which oil had separated on top, so after cooling it down in the fridge, the hard part under the oil layer was perfect for shaping with hands. If your peanut butter is perfectly stirred, you can put it in the freezer for an hour before rolling the balls. Cut the dough into equal parts (I had enough of everything for 20 balls, but you can make them bigger or smaller if you prefer), flatten each little dough part and wrap them around the peanut balls. Roll them in sesame seeds and set aside while you prepare the oil. Pour the oil in a cooking pot, at least 3 cm of depth so that the rice balls can float and fry evenly. Heat it to a more or less constant temperature at lower to medium heat; if you use too high heat, the balls will fry too quickly from the outside and stay raw on the inside. Put the rice balls inside and fry for around 3 minutes. You will see them expand and turn brown (that colour is not form over-frying, but from the coconut sugar inside). When the sesame starts to get slightly, barely visibly golden, you can take the rice balls out and put them on a cloth to absorb any excess oil. And that's it, you have your supertasty fried sticky rice balls. Bon appétit!