Last Sunday was the Dong1Zhi4 Festival or the Winter Solstice Festival. Traditionally in Chinese communities, this festival is actually a time for the family to get together. An important activity that occurs during this important day is the making and eating of Tang1Yuan2, also called the glutinous rice balls as they are made from glutinous rice flour. TangYuan symbolizes reunion. We decided to make some TangYuan.

We started by adding water to the glutinous rice flour in order to make the dough. After water is added, we stirred the mixing.

Ooops…too much water and therefore more glutinous rice flour is needed. And continued stirring.

TangYuan are sometimes brightly coloured instead of white. White is the mixture of glutinous rice flour and water only. And to make coloured TangYuan, we added a little bit of edible colouring that has been bought earlier. Then keep stirring to form the dough.

This is the green dough.

This is the red dough.

TangYuan can be plain or stuffed. We made the plain ones with the white, red and green dough. We took a sufficient amount of the dough and roll it into balls using both our palms.

To make the stuffed ones, we usually put sesame peanuts or red bean paste. The stuffed ones are not easy to cook as the TangYuan might split during the boiling process and the soup will either become sesame peanut or red bean soup at the end. Anyone has any idea to prevent the splitting?

The TangYuan are cooked in a sweet soup. The pandan leaves can be cooked together to add flavour to the soup as well as the TangYuan.  Actually, we have made a little bit more than just the plain ones.  You will get what I mean when you scroll down and read on.

Siew Peng’s sister has made the “dog” TangYuan using the white and red dough.

She has also made an “alien” TangYuan.

There are also TangYuan with other mixture of colours and sizes.

This one has some sort of pattern on it.

These are marbles TangYuan.

Alien TangYuan again.

I guess this must be the side effect of watching The Day The Earth Stood Still. Will you eat them? They still taste the same anyway. Don’t let your mind play tricks on you. Happy Belated DongZhi (Winter Solstice) to everybody!