For the longest time (until now), I thought Ah Balling referred to the name of a local tang yuan chain of stores; a name I assumed, was meant to be a tongue in cheek reference to how obviously ball-like (ahem) these sticky rice balls are, and perhaps to the Chinese culture in Singapore of prefixing a given name with “Ah” for informality’s sake. Little did I know (until I attempted my own with a primer about them in “The Way of Kueh”) that they actually (and literally) mean “mother duck’s egg”, which is a bit of a stretch in my case, considering how they ended up resembling Hakka abacus seeds instead 🧮. It was hard to choose between roasted peanut and black sesame fillings so I went for both, choosing to enrobe the latter in pandan-infused dough and bathing them in a light, syrupy pandan broth. ⚪️🟢⚪️🟢⚪️🟢⚪️🟢⚪️