Winter Solstice occurs between 21st to 23rd December in the Northern Hemisphere when one of the earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. The longest night and shortest day are experienced here. At the same time the opposite happens in the Southern Hemisphere which is experiencing Summer Solstice with longest day and shortest night.
In Chinese, "dong" means winter and "zhi" means arrival. So dongzhi means arrival of winter. The winter solstice traditions were created to celebrate the "birth of the sun" and is marked by rituals like eating winter solstice foods, for example, the glutinous rice balls or tang yuan.
Generally, the tang yuan are cooked in syrup. However, there are some people who cook them in savoury soup with pork balls or sliced pork and vegetables. Tang yuan comes in different sizes but for ease of eating, I usually make them with about 1 cm diameter or 5 gm each small ball. They also come in different colours; for health reason, nowadays natural ingredients are used to colour them, for example, blue pea flowers for blue tang yuan, pandan leaves for green, orange sweet potatoes for orange, purple sweet potatoes for purple, beetroot for red, pumpkin for yellow, carrots for orange, red dragon fruit for red and so on. Some tang yuan are filled with crushed peanuts or red or black bean paste to name a few.
I have experimented to come up with tang yuan which are of a good texture, neither too softy nor too hard. And I willl be using these measurements to ensure this texture in future years to come. I usually make 5-6 different colours of tang yuan.
Ingredients:
- White tang yuan:
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 60 g water
- Green tang yuan
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 8 - 10 pandan leaves grind with 70 g water to obtain 60 g pandan juice
- Orange tang yuan
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 55 g orange sweet potato
- 40g water
- Red tang yuan
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 60 g dragon fruit
- 5 g water (little water is used as the dragon fruit is very juicy)
- Purple tang yuan
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 100 g purple sweet potato
- 35 g water
- Blue tang yuan:
- 75 g glutinous rice flour
- 10 fresh blue pea flowers
- 60 g water
- 1.5 litre of water
- 150 g sugar (or less or more depending on the level of sweetness you desire)
- 4-5 pandan leaves
Method:
Step 1: Preparing the dough
- For white tang yuan:
- Add glutinous rice to a bowl.
- Add water to the bowl.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
- For green colour tang yuan
- Add glutinous rice flour and pandan juice to a bowl.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
- For orange colour tang yuan
- Steam orange sweet potato till soft.
- Add them to the glutinous rice flour while they are hot.
- Add water.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
- For red colour tang yuan:
- Skin and mash the dragon fruit.
- Add them to the glutinous rice flour.
- Add water.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
- For purple colour tang yuan:
- Steam purple sweet potato till soft.
- Add them to the glutinous rice flour while they are hot.
- Add water.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
- For blue tang yuan:
- Steep or soak the blue pea (take only the petals) in hot water for half an hour.
- Sieve the soaked flowers to obtain the blue water.
- Add the glutinous rice to a bowl.
- Add the blue water to the bowl.
- Mix and knead them till a smooth dough is formed.
- Weigh them into 5 g dough.
- Roll them into balls.
- Arrange them on a tray and cover them to prevent them from hardening.
Step 2: Making the syrup.
- Boil a pot of water.
- Add the pandan leaves and sugar to the pot.
- Stir to ensure that the sugar is dissolved.
- Turn off the fire and remove the pandan leaves.
- Let the syrup cool down completely.
Step 3
- Prepare a pot of cold boiled water.
Step 4: Boiling the dough
- Boil a pot of water.
- When the water is boiling add the white tang yuan to them.
- When the tang yuan is cooked (they float in the water when cooked), scoop them up into a pot of cold boiled water.
- Transfer the tang yuan to the pot of syrup.
- Do not stir the tang yuan.
Step 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 till all the dough balls have been cooked. Always change the water in Step 4 when you are cooking a different colour dough to ensure that there is no contamination of the various colours.
Step 6: Leave the pot of tang yuan on your counter top till the next day. (I always make my tang yuan on the eve of the Winter Solstice Festival.