Winter Solstice or Dongzhi

Technically it occurs when the sunshine is the weakest and daylight is the shortest.

Symbolically for Asians it signifies:
- being a year older in the Chinese calendar;
- reunion and get together with family where tong yuen are made and eaten;
- mark of the end of the year, that one month later it will be Chinese New Year.

This year I had many tong yuen sessions – one on Sunday night itself with my inlaws and then at my parents place on Monday night but that turned out to be a disaster because we bought commercial ones and it was hard as rocks even though we boiled them quite long (until all the fillings came out). We couldn’t make our own as we ran out of glutinous rice flour and so postponed it to another session yesterday.


Homemade ones are SO MUCH BETTER and reliable in terms of taste and quality. Not only that, it is also fun and easy to make. We will not be buying anymore commercial ones (even though we had great success previously, not sure what is wrong with the quality of the recent ones!!). Also they are not cheap either!

I really enjoyed my inlaw’s version of tong yuen and my MIL gave me a few leftover brown slab nuggets which she cut into small little chunks. Also decided to experiment with M&Ms recommended by Kel!! They were nice and added a chocolate or peanut filling to the tong yuen balls. Be warned that the M&M melts (not in your hand) but inside the dough so I recommend that you cook this as soon as you finish rolling them up to avoid a meltdown with the balls and the fillings oozing out!! That is what happen to some of mine since I had prepared them earlier and only cooked them after dinner :(

Needless to say, since Master Prince discovered the sweet filled ones, its no surprise that he prefers them to the plain rainbow coloured ones (which he used to like). His current favourites are the chocolate and sweet filled balls!

Here is the recipe which is very easy. Unfortunately no exact measurements, sorry. I hate ‘feel-recipes’ as I am such a paper-cook but believe me, it is hard to mess this one up.

For the dough balls
Glutinous rice flour (amount as required)
Tepid water (room temperature, no exact measure here, just enough to make a pliable dough)
Food colouring (optional)
Fillings (optional) – The filling can be sweet or savoury. Some ideas are M&Ms plain or with peanut, red bean, peanut, sesame seed, lotus paste or brown slab sugar. Note that traditional ones are served plain without fillings and usually coloured pink and white only.

I left the white plain, orange balls filled with M&M chocolates, green balls filled with the brown sugar nuggets and the pink balls filled with the M&M peanuts. This way my family could track and choose what fillings they prefer.

1. Mix rice flour with water until you have a soft pliable dough. If too soft, add more flour and if too hard, add more water. For coloured dough, mix in food colouring as desired.
2. Pinch off some dough and roll into little balls. Continue until you have finished all the dough.
3. Boil water in a pot and drop balls into boiling water. The balls will sink to the bottom of the pot.
4. Continue to boil until the balls float up or are slightly translucent or soft and chewy.
5. Scoop balls and place them into a bowl of cool water until ready to use.

For the sweet spicy fragrant soup
4 cups water
3-4 pandan leaves, washed and tied into a knot
4-8 slices of old ginger (more if you like yours spicy)
Gula Melaka or palm sugar shavings (no exact measurement here, depends on how sweet you like yours. You can substitute with brown sugar or rock sugar but it will not be as fragrant)

Place all ingredients into pot and boil for 30-40 min or until fragrant. Add more sugar or ginger to your taste.

To serve, place a few cooked balls into a bowl and pour some soup/syrup. Serve hot.