Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Merdeka Weekend Baking - Onde - Onde

For the three day long Merdeka (Independence Day) weekend I decided to make three types of Malaysian delight so we could enjoy a different taste of Malaysia each day in conjunction with the Merdeka celebration.

On the first day, I tried my hands at making my sis's and my favourite kuih, onde-onde. They use to sell onde-onde in a packet of four and I always find that there is not enough to share, not to mention the onde-onde sold outside are tiny and I always find that they don't use enough gula melaka (palm sugar) especially the crunchy bits, which I love, for the filling. Well, I guess that's just doing business, they have to lower cost by skimping on the good stuff.



Ingredients:
120g sweet potato, mashed (one is enough)
300g glutinous rice flour
1 tbsp tapioca flour
1 tbsp caster sugar
15 pandan leaves
85ml water
some green food colouring

100g fresh grated coconut 
1/2 tsp fine salt

100g gula melaka, chopped coarsely 

Method:
Cut the sweet potato into cubes and place on a plate. On a separate plate, combine the grated coconut and salt. Steam the sweet potato until soft and coconut for about 5 minutes. Did you know that cooking the coconut will prevent it from spoiling easily?


Place pandan leaves in blender with some water and blend until you get pandan juice. Remove the leaves and strain the juice into a saucepan. Boil pandan juice, stir in caster sugar and set aside. 


Meanwhile, chop the gula melaka into chunky pieces. Not too fine, this is so that you get those crunchy sweet bits in the filling.



Boil tapioca flour with 85ml water and keep stirring until mixture becomes transparent. Immediately pour the tapioca mixture into the glutinous rice flour and mashed potatoes and knead mixture. Gradually pour in the pandan juice and knead into a smooth dough. Add some food coloring to get a prettier green.

Pinch around 13g of dough and form into balls. Flatten and wrap it with pieces of gula melaka.

Cook balls in a pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes. Once they are cooked, roll them in the grated coconut.
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While making the dough, I accidentally poured too much water into the flour mixture so I had to add a lot more flour. My lesson for a reminder to all, when it comes to making the dough, add water slowly.



Last year during my Malacca trip with the girls, we made a pit stop at Baba Charlie. We were so excited about their onde-onde but sadly they were below expectation. They are supposed to be famous for their Nyonya kuihs. I don't know what went wrong. To be fair, they were actually out of onde but we were desperate and we told them we can wait for it, so maybe it's due to them rushing to fulfill the orders?


Onde-onde is a popular snack in Malaysia but it is said to originate from Java. In Indonesia it's called klepon. There are a variety of onde-onde from different countries. Did you know that the chinese variation of onde-onde is jin deui? If you don't know what jin deui is, it's fried glutinous rice flour coated with sesame seeds and has red bean paste filing. My mum sometimes buy this back after having dim sum.

Happy trying out! xx

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