I Cook: Glutinous Rice Balls

I've always love "tong yuen" or glutinous rice balls, a traditional Chinese dessert. I enjoy the process of shaping the dough into tiny little balls... or sometimes "piggies".

There are mainly two types of tong yuen, filled and unfilled. Tong yuen is also served with a variety of broth ranging from soya bean milk to simple sweet broth. My favorite is just simple unfilled tong yuen in sweet broth.

Thanks to mom's recipe, I managed to make tong yuen for my hubby :p...

For tong yuen:
- 1 cup of glutinous rice flour
- 100ml of water
- 1/2 cup of rock sugar
- food coloring

1. Slowly add water into the large bowl filled with glutinous rice flour.
2. Knead the dough until it forms a soft paste.
3. If you want to make tong yuen of different colors, divide the dough into portions and add a drop of food coloring to the dough portion.
4. Knead until the food coloring is evenly distributed.
5. Shape the dough into balls or any shape :)
6. Leave the tong yuen to dry for about an hour.
7. Drop the tong yuen into a pot of hot boiling water. They will float when cooked. Once this happens, transfer the tong yuen into the sweet broth.

For sweet broth:
- 4 cups of water
- pandan leave (knotted)
- 1/2 cup of rock sugar
- 2 inches of ginger

1. Boil the water in a pot until it bubbles.
2. Add the ginger and pandan leave, and boil for about 5-10 minutes before adding rock sugar. Lower the heat and let broth simmer for 15 minutes.