Winter Solstice (冬至）

Today is the winter solstice, which is also regarded as a festival day for family reunion too. The Chinese will make glutinous rice dumpling in sweet ginger soup on such a special day every year end. The old folks at home used to tell the kids that you will grow 1 year older everytime you eat the glutinous rice dumpling. I guess that because for last time, this dessert was prepared only at the end of the year. Nowadays, we can easily buy ready made ones from the supermarket anytime.

I remembered when I was young, my mother will prepare the glutinous rice flour dough and divide it into 2 portion. Then she will add a few drops of food grade red colouring into one portion of the dough & roll it into light pink dough. The other portion of the dough will remain in plain white colour. Then she will roll the doughs into long stick and cut it into many small & big cubes. Then, its my time to join in the fun to roll the cubes into balls.

I used to buy ready made glutinous rice dumpling with peanut, red bean paste and black sesame paste filling from the supermarket which is fast and easy to prepare but this year I decided to try and make my own glutinous rice flour dumpling. I will make do with just the Japanese purple sweet potatoes in my fridge.

It would have been more colourful if I have some yellow sweet potatoes too. I prepared the dough late last night as I was busy making bags, so the kids didn't get to play with the dough. Maybe, next time, I will ask them to join in the fun.

It is easy to prepare.

Ingredients :

3 medium steamed Japanese purple sweet potatoes (Mashed)
100g glutinous rice flour
half a glass of warm water
2 tbsp sugar

(soup)
1 big piece of ginger(smashed)
8 sweet honey dates
2 honey rock sugar
2 to 3 pc of pandan leaves


Filling:
Add 1 tbsp of sugar into 3/4 of purple sweet potatoes and mix well. Divide into small cubes about the size of a 10 cent coin.

Dough:
Mix 100g glutinous rice flour, 1tbsp of sugar and 1/4 sweet potatoes together and add in the warm water slowly and knead the mixture into soft dough. If it is too wet, simply just add somemore flour or if too dry, just add in a little bit more water. You will get a nice sweet purple colour dough. Divide the dough into small cubes that is bigger than the sweet potatoes cubes filling.

Sprinkle some rice flour on a large plate. Press the dough flat and add the filling and roll it up into balls. Usually, I dont measure everything exactly. So there will be big & small rice balls in my soup. Haha... Just be flexible when cooking. I will just add in more flour if I have anymore sweet potatoes fillings left and just knead into smaller plain glutinous rice balls.  

Soup:
In a medium pot, add in the ingredients for soup into 3L of water and boil till the honey dates are soften, lightly press so that the natural sweetness from the honey dates are released into the soup. Once the soup is boiling again, add in the rice balls and its ready once the balls float up to the surface.

Enjoy and happy winter solstice to all my Chinese friends!