冬至 / Winter Solstice Festival - Mission Accomplished!

Tomorrow (Sunday) will be 冬至 (dong1 zhi4)/ Winter Solstice Festival. According to wikipedia, it means "The Extreme of Winter" when the sunshine is the weakest and the daylight is the shortest. This is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese, marked by the making and eating of 汤圆 (tang1 yuan2).

汤圆 or balls of glutinuous rice flour (tepung beras pulut) symbolizes 'reunion'. Tang Yuan may be plain or stuffed; the soup sweet or savoury (salty) - which usually differs from household to household according to their clan (Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, etc..)

My mission : To make special 汤圆 this year.

So, we made Tang Yuan this morning as Mom needs some to pray at the altar early tomorrow morning. This year its more special, as I decided to try a new recipe. Instead of stuffing the glutinous rice balls with palm sugar (gula melaka), we used some custard+corn cream as the filling.

That's why u can see that the Tang Yuan are a bit yellow in colour, because of the corn stuffing. Otherwise, they look like fishballs..hahaha..

For the soup, we use gula melaka, brown sugar & ginger. And not forgetting, the screwpine leaves (daun pandan) should be tied into a knot, and put into the soup once the water+sugar+ginger are boiled, i.e. mendidih (NOT cook together with sugar, etc). This is to get the maximum aroma from the screwpine leaves.

Hehehe.. misssion accomplished! =)