Black Sesame Soup.

This is a very traditional Chinese dessert which is a variation of "tong sui" (meaning sugar water--or sweet water). As a personal favorite of mine growing up, it's a great dessert for the mid afternoon or after meals--especially during winter. I hope you can love it as much as I can.

Ingredients:
1.) ~1 cup of black sesame seeds
2.) ~1 cup of white granulated sugar
3.) ~1.5 cups of water
4.) ~1 tbsp of starch dissolved in water

Directions:
1.) Using a mortar and pestle, grind the sesame seeds into a fine of powder as possible. The less fine the powder is, the more gritty the soup will be. Tip: One trick to ensure that all the sesame seeds have been crushed is to run the powder through either a cheese cloth or fine sieve. Personally, since I love eating sesame seeds just as, I'm not too concerned with the gritty.

Black sesame seeds! My favorite :D

2.) Place the powder in pot and mix with water. Constantly stirring, add in the sugar. Keep in mind, in this step, you can add as much sugar as you want. Just be careful on going overboard.

Add to pot with water and sugar and bring to boil. As you can see, the dessert is thickening up.

3.) Keep stirring until the soup as come to a boil. If the soup is still too runny (it should be thick like liquid glue), add the starch dissolved in water and keep stirring until the soup is thick. Remove from heat and serve.

I left a fourth of my seeds partially crushed. It loved the texture :D

Afterthoughts: This was such a delicious dessert. Even though I left about a fourth of my seeds partially crushed, it turned out to be a nice texture. This isn't for everyone, but it is for me :]. Mine was a little more soupy than I had intended but overall it was nice. To be honest, the sesame powder can be purchased on a supermarket for a fairly decent price, but the trade off is the fact that it is usually more starch than actual sesame (which then you lose the rich sesame flavour for less work). This serves around two to three people. Enjoy!

Costs:
1 pack of black sesame seeds (which equals to three cups a packet) = $2.50