ƸӜƷ•¨¯`•My Recuerdos•¨¯`•ƸӜƷ

My dad bought glutinous rice flour at the grocer's today (a 1 kg pack) so my mum suggested that we make "tong yun" (glutinous rice balls). Usually they're made during this date on the Chinese calender where the Kitchen God makes his annual report to the Sky Emperor (to report whether the family is behaving well or not). To ensure that the Kitchen God made favourable reports, wives dip the Kitchen God's pictures in wine (to make him drunk),wipe his mouth with honey (to sweeten his mouth) or make offerings of "tong yun".

Anyway,my family is Christian so "tong yun" is made as a treat dessert (its nice to eat),not offerings or anything. So my mum kneads the flour with water until we get sticky dough. Pretty easy actually;just add water and knead till you're satisfied with the texture...

And if you're not satisfied with boring white,add some colour.
Pinch a little dough and knead it into a ball.

Flatten the ball and add a little filling in the middle.
In my case,I like "gula Melaka" (brown sugar).

Then,close the dough around the filling and you'll
get a cute "tong yun" ready to boil and eat:-

But of course...ONE isn't satisfying enough. So repeat the process until you think you have enough to whet your cravings. Many hands make light work so my mum and I roped in my brother,Joshua and cousin,Khai Meng to help (its so simple even GUYS can do this)

This is only one tray,there are more!!

Working in the kitchen can be really fun if there are many people there. This was proven when Khai Meng proposed the idea of mini "tong yun". I tried out his idea and the result was charming. Credits to Khai Meng...

Displaying the first successful mini...

It wasn't easy to make the minis. Try wrapping mini amount of dough over mini amount of sugar. Its a tedious job. This how a mini compares against a normal "tong yun" :-

So i had to stop...At least I managed to make a few. The dough for ONE normal "tong yun" was sufficient for FIVE minis.

Anyway,my mum immediately boiled some for us to eat.
TIP: When boiling "tong yun" make sure all the balls float to the water surface before ladling them out. The floating means it's cooked thoroughly,otherwise you end up sinking your teeth into raw flour and sugar...

My reward for helping my mum..

MMmmmm.....YUMMY!!!!