Glutinous Rice Balls, Barley and bits of Melon Strips!
I'm sure some of you are serving this today. Glutinous Rice balls, or also known as Tang Yuan in colours to commemorate the "one year older" celebration or called the Tang Chek Festival (Dong Zhi). Well, as a modern mum who knows next to nothing about traditional and auspicious Chinese Festival, I decided not to let my girls miss out on this. I'm sure when they go to school, they'd probably hear from their friends about foods for festivals.
Yesterday, the shops were selling the kneaded doughs in multiple colours, glutinous flours for those who'd like to make from scratch, and ready made ones from suppliers. There were two types of ready made ones. One was the very commercial which you can buy all year long, with fillings like peanut, sesame, and yams inside. These were large ones.. (eww, I can't eat that). One type I discovered recently on the market are the plain ones, Mini Glutinous Rice Balls, which are so tiny and is plain and they come in white and pink in a packet. It costed only $1.50 for a packet so I got those.
This morning I had a bright idea... Instead of cooking in the normal sugared water and pandan, I decided to boil barley, melon strips first. Why not? A 2-in-1 kinda dessert! So after boiling them, when the liquid was still boiling, I added the raw glutinous balls and used rock sugar to get the right sweetness! How about that? Barley and wintermelon with Glutinous Rice Balls for our Winter Solstice Festival!
The symbol of eating Tang Yuan - Unity and Prosperity
