This Mung Bean Sweet Potato Dessert is a comforting Chinese sweet soup made with soft mung beans, tender sweet potatoes, sago pearls and fragrant pandan leaves. Lightly sweetened with coconut palm sugar and finished with coconut milk, it’s perfect served warm or chilled.
Have ready all ingredients needed to cook this dessert.
Start by preparing the mung beans. First rinse mung beans in several changes of water till clean. Next add water and soak for at least 4 hours or overnight. Then discard the soaking water and set aside the soaked mung bean.
Skin sweet potatoes, wash and cut into equal size cubes. Set aside.
Then cook the small sago. Bring 2 litre water to a boil. Then gently add the small sago. Bring to the boil again. Then turn to medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring continuously.
Off the heat. Cover and let sago soaked in pot for 10 minutes. Sago is semi-translucent with white spot in the centre. Drain and rinse the small sago under running water till it is cooled. Set aside for later use.
Cooking Mung Bean Sweet Potato Dessert:
Add 1.5 Liter water in a big pot. Add knotted pandan leaves (for flavour) and bring to a boil.
Add soaked mung bean and bring to a boil again. Reduce to medium-low heat. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, till mung bean is softened.
Add in sweet potatoes and bring to a boil again. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for another 5 minutes till the sweet potatoes are softened.
Next add in coconut palm sugar and salt. Stir occasionally and cook until the palm sugar is fully dissolved.
Then add in the semi-cooked sago and coconut milk. Bring to a boil again. Then off heat, cover and let sago continue to cook for another 15 minutes until sago turns fully translucent.
The mung bean sweet potato dessert is ready to be served.
Prep the mung beans properly. It is recommended to soak mung beans to enable it to cook faster and more evenly. For silky texture, cook longer until beans partially break down.
Cut the sweet potatoes evenly into medium cubes (about 2-3 cm). If cut too small the sweet potatoes can disintegrate and if too big, it will be hard inside.
Cook mung beans first until soft, then add sweet potatoes. This prevents potatoes from becoming mushy while mung beans are still hard.
The water ratio is important as too much water will result in the dessert being too diluted and tasteless. Too little water will make the dessert thick and pasty. You can adjust at the end of the cooking process depending on your preferred thickness.
Add the coconut palm sugar only after the mung beans are soft. Adding too early can slow down the softening.
Coconut milk is added at the end of the cooking. Off heat immediately when the coconut milk comes to a boil,