Around this time last year, I made a post about Rice Dumplings.
For those who dont know what they are, its a traditional Chinese food, eaten during the Dragon boat festival.
Now with Rice Dumplings, theres a savoury version, and a sweet version.
The key ingredients, sticky rice, and bamboo leaves are present in both variations.
Despite appearing the same on the outside (although the savoury one is usually bigger)
The two dumplings are quite different on the inside.
Savoury ones usually contains Mung beans, along with many different things, including pork/chicken, mushroom, scallops, dried shrimp, chestnuts, etc
The sweet type, is usually filled with Red beans, and soaked in lye water, which makes the sticky rice turn yellow.
Today however, we are looking at a more modern variation of the Sticky rice dumpling.
For starters, it’s a frozen dessert.
These ones came in different flavours
The coloured string makes them easily distinguishable
So from the outside, they look pretty much the same as a traditional rice dumpling.
Its probably hard to tell, but they are a lot smaller than in the picture. Roughly around they size of a prawn dumpling which you’d have at yum cha.
Now we strip away the bamboo leaves and take a look on the inside.
What you’d find, is that instead of using sticky rice, they’ve used sticky rice flour to wrap the dumpling.
The first one I tried was a kiwifruit, and honey dew melon flavour
Followed by the more traditional red bean
So by now most of you are thinking- Well, that’s just a ice mochi isn’t it?
Well, yes it is.
However, you must first understand the process of making this dessert.
For starters, making a rice dumpling is not an easy task.
You must carefully layer in the ingredients into neatly wrapped pieces of bamboo leaves.
Then you must tie the whole thing together, tightly, and at the same time, wrap a string around it to hold it all into place.
Then theres the art of making mochi.
For those who helped out for our 21st, you would understand the difficulty of making one.
This was one of our first attempts
And as you can see, it didn’t turn out very successful
So making rice dumpling is hard
Making ice mochi is hard
Combine the two together and you end up with something that takes lots of skills and effort to make.
So to whoever made these small desserts which are currently sitting in my freezer, THANKYOU for all the hard work which you’ve put into making these.
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