Sweet Glutinous Rice Ball

December is indeed a special month of festivals.  Other than Christmas that everyone cheer for (holiday and sales!!), there is Chinese’s Dongzhi Festival.  I will not forget to share my favourite festive food for Dongzhi Festival, Glutinous Rice Ball!

Traditionally Glutinous Rice Ball are consumed during Dongzhi Festival (Winter Solstice Festival) celebrated by Chinese and other East Asians.  Due to its popularity, this festive food can now easily be found served in dessert specialty restaurants throughout the year or purchased raw but ready made from supermarkets or markets during this season for own cooking.  Otherwise, do it yourself!  Glutinous Rice Ball are easy to cook.  Now anyone can eat Glutinous Rice Ball anytime throughout the year!

This festival falls on or around December 22^nd.  It is one of the most important festivals amongst Chinese where family get together for meal.  This time, Glutinous Rice Ball which is called Tang Yuan in Mandarin, will be served as a symbol of reunion.

Glutinous Rice Ball are made of glutinous rice flour.  These Glutinous Rice Ball can be plain or stuffed with fillings but often brightly coloured and cooked in sweet soup or salty broth.  The Glutinous Rice Ball recipe shared below is cooked in sweet soup the local way.

Although ready made and cooked Glutinous Rice Ball is easily available and save a lot of hassle, making Glutinous Rice Ball isn’t that hard at all.  Ingredients required are just glutinous rice flour and sugar for glutinous rice ball; gula melaka and pandan leaves for the sweet soup.

Instead of using artificial colouring to colour the Glutinous Rice Ball, this recipe shares some tips on using food as colouring instead.  Purple colour comes from yam while red colour comes from red dragon fruit.  Green colour can also be made from pandan leaves.  Divide the flour to different portion for different colours when making the Glutinous Rice Ball dough.  No point mixing all colourings together in one dough, right?  If you find it a hassle, you can just use artificial colouring or just make it plain without any colour.  As for stuffing, red bean paste is the easiest to handle while grounded peanuts are easiest to find.

Now let’s look at our local Tang Yuan recipe!

Glutinous Rice Ball Recipe (Serves 10 pax)

Ingredients:

• 1kg of glutinous rice flour
• 2 tbsp of sugar for glutinous rice ball
• 2 ½ cups of water for glutinous rice ball
• 300gm of gula melaka for soup
• 3 tbsp of sugar for soup
• 5 nos. of pandan leaves (tied up) for soup
• 3 litres of water for soup

Optional Ingredients for colouring:

• ½ nos. of dragon fruit (blended) to 500gm of flour for colouring– please reduce water for glutinous rice ball
• 100gm of yam (skin peeled and blended) to 500gm of flour for colouring

Optional Ingredients for filling:

• Grounded peanuts
• Red bean paste

 

Preparation:

1. In a big mixing bowl, mix glutinous rice flour with sugar.  If you opted for powder type colouring, please mix the colouring as well.  Note that only one colour for one dough.  For more than one colour, divide the flour to few parts accordingly.
2. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add water to the well bit by bit while stirring the water with a fork to slowly blend in the water.  If you are using liquid colouring, add the colouring to the water.
3. When the flour mixture thickens, knead into dough that is slightly sticky and not too dry.
4. Cut the dough into smaller portions and roll every portion with hands into a long, thick bar.
5. Cut the bar-like-dough into smaller portions, the size of a fish ball (or smaller) and roll each portion with both hands into a ball.  Set aside on big flat plate and prevent the glutinous rice ball by touching each other.  To wrap fillings, flatten a thick ball, place the filling in the middle and wrap it up nicely.  If necessary, flatten another piece of glutinous rice ball to cover any holes to prevent filling from leaking out when cooking.
6. Meanwhile, put water, gula melaka, sugar and pandan leaves in a pot to make sweet soup.  Bring the sweet soup to boil.
7. Add all glutinous rice balls into the sweet soup and continue to boil until the glutinous rice balls float on top to indicate they’re cooked.
8. Turn off fire and Glutinous Rice Balls are ready to be served!

Sweet Glutinous Rice Ball

This post is tagged Chinese food, Chinese recipes, Chinese rice ball, dessert recipe, desserts, festive food, glutinous rice, glutinous rice ball, glutinous rice ball recipe, glutinous rice flour, tang yuan, tang yuan recipe