Chinese Winter Solstice Festival (Tang Chek, Dong Zhi) – Making Tang Yuan (Glutinous Rice Balls) From Produce (Dragon Fruit, Sweet potato, screwpine)

How time flies, I started blogging since June 08 and now it is Chinese Winter Solstice (Tang Chek, Dong Zhi) festival again. The actual day for this festival falls on 21 Dec 2008. Chinese families around the world will gather on the eve to make Tang Yuan, round glutinous rice balls which are then boiled in sugar syrup with screw pine (pandan) in it. Tang Yuan, in Chinese sounds like reunion and “yuan” for round represent perfection. So when you have all the family members making this sweet dessert, it is like a perfect reunion! In China during the olden days, this celebration marks the start of winter. This year I tried to do something different. Instead of using off the shelf artificial food colourings, I used purple and orange sweet potato as natural colouring. For green I used screw pine leaves (pandan) juice and for red I used Dragon Fruit. My mom started using these ingredients not long ago and natural alternative to artificial colouring is better for health. I went to the Kepong wet market early. There was a lot of people already there, many crowding around the roast pork stall. I bought a packet of glutinous flour, sweet potato, and dragon fruit for the Tang Yuan colouring. First I knead the glutinous flour using very little water. For the sweet potato type, I steamed the sweet potato first and remove the skin. Then I add the sweet potato to the glutinous dough and knead until it was well mixed. For the Dragon Fruit Tang Yuan, I squashed some of the Dragon Fruit flesh and sieve it to get the pure juice. For the screw pine tang yuan, I pound some pandan leaves and squeeze out the natural juice. Here are the pictures of my Sweet Naturally Caloured Tang Yuen. Dragon fruit for the pink colour and sweet potato for purple and orange colour. Dough all ready to be rolled................................Various coloured Tang Yuan

Tang Yuan ready to be boiled.................................A bowl of nice Tang Yuan!