Tang Yuan is eaten during the winter solstice and it symbolizes peace and unity.
Dong Zhi -Tang Yuan (sweet dessert)
Ingredients
500g of ready-mix glutinous rice dough (can be bought from market during the festival time)
4 bowl of water (250ml x 4 = 1litre)
160gm of dark brown sugar
1 stalk of pandan leaves
Method:
1. Boil 1 litre of water with pandan leaves in a pot until you can smell of pandan leave fragrant, remove pandan leave then off the fire. – sweet soup base..
2. Boil 1 litre of water then once it boil reduce to low fire. Prepare some glutinous rice flour for dusting, take out the ready-mix glutinous rice dough, separate the red colour from the white.
3. Cover the red colour dough while you rolling the white dough. Then use water to wet your hands then knead the white dough into well mix, then roll into a long shape. Then divide into 2 small portion, while rolling the balls, the rest of the portion must be kept covered.Use your wet palm to roll them into small balls.
4. Dust your tray with some glutinous rice flour, then put the well roll ball into the tray and cover it. This is to prevent the ball from getting dry thru room temperature. Then proceed to do the red colour dough, knead them with wet hands until they are sticky then divide into small portions, then start to roll into small balls.
5. Once you finished rolling all the ball, put them into tray, you have turn on fire to boil the pot of water. Once you see bubbles, drop in your white ball slowly let it cooked. Prepare a pot of tap water. Then you see the white ball floated up, scoop them up and put into the pot of tap water. Then stir the ball a while. This is to prevent the ball from stick to each other later on. Do the same for the red colour ball too.
6. Then turn on the fire for the pandan leave syrup pot, put the brown sugar to cook, until it dissolved, let the water boil, then drain dry the ball from the pot of tap water and put them into the syrup pot. At this time, you may also add in the red colour balls too, then let them cook until you see all the ball floated up, off fire.
7. You are ready to serve the traditional way of tang yuan with dark brown sugar.
