Sweet Glutinous Rice Dumplings with Filling

*Disclaimer*:  If you are looking for an exact recipe, you will not find it here.  This is a venue to help you search for other recipes online; combine, modify, and revise recipes to cater to your needs; and provide you with more of the experience of making a particular dish rather than just the ingredients and directions.

Everyone needs to learn how to make these!!  It's fairly simple (only mildly finicky =), delicious, and gluten free to boot (apparently, "gluten" is a word that refers to something specific.  The world "glutinous" when describing this rice flour is only an adjective referring to the sticky quality of the rice/dough).  I had never made these before and it literally took me about 2 hours from deciding to make them to eating them freshly cooked.

There are different names for this.  I think if you Google "glutinous rice dumplings" you should get some good recipes.  In Cantonese they're called "tong yuen" (I don't know how close that is to the exact Cantonese pinyin).  Apparently, they're called "tang yuan" in Mandarin (totally just cheated and looked it up =).

They can have different fillings: from Red Bean Paste, to Black Sesame, to Peanut.  I made the Peanut ones because that's my favorite.  But I also think it might be the easiest to make (unless you have already made Red Bean Paste or a Black Sesame Paste).

Searching for a recipe:

For this recipe you will need to search under the Chinese names "tong yuen" or "tang yuan".  For more specific filling recipes try "black sesame/peanut/red bean tong yuen/tang yuan".  Don't forget to experiment with any filling of your choice =).

First, the Dough:

A little blurb about Glutinous (or Sticky) Rice Flour.  It's an interesting consistency.  When raw it won't gum up into a dough like Wheat Flour does.  It's more fine, like Cornstarch.  But it still has enough stick to it that it's not "ooblecky" as Cornstarch.  The dough turns out to be something between the consistency of Cornstarch with water and a Wheat Flour Dough.

Most recipes call for an approximate 2 to 1 ratio of Rice Flour to water.  I used about 1 cup Rice Flour to 1/2 cup water.  You will have to play around with it.  The hard thing about this dough is that on both sides of the "perfect consistency" (i.e. too dry or too wet) the dough does similar things.  Whether it's too dry or too wet the dough will break apart when you try to flatten it out.  To test the dough, take a small piece of dough--about the size of a shooter marble (if you don't know how big that is, just think the size of a quarter, but 3-dimensional).  Try to flatten that out into a 1.5 - 2 inch circle.  If it cracks and breaks easily, it's either too wet or too dry.  Now, try to isolate the feel of the dough in your hands.  At first, you might just try adding a little water or a little flour to see what it does.  Eventually, you will be able to intuit whether it is too dry or too wet.  Note that it still won't be easy to form that circle because the of the finicky nature of raw Rice Flour, but when it's the right consistency, it shouldn't break as easily.

Now, the Filling:

I am going to talk about the Peanut Filling.  As I noted above, there are other fillings you can use--Red Bean, Black Sesame.  In fact, you can even think outside the box.  My mom used to put M&M's in it =).  YOu can use chocolate, maybe make an almond filling (ooh...now that I've  thought of it, that sounds delicious!).  This time I made Peanut Filling, which is delicious.

I combined a few recipes that I found through Google.  It's mostly about your own preference on taste and texture.  I ended up using about 1/2 cups of peanuts, ground.  I used a coffee grinder, which was perfect for my purposes.  I added 2 Tbsp of creamy peanut butter; and then I added 1 Tbsp powdered sugar.  After tasting it, I decided it needed a little more sugar, especially because the dough isn't sweet at all, so added another Tbsp of powdered sugar which turned out to be perfect.  My Filling turned out to be more solid than gooey.  If you prefer it gooier, you might use less ground peanuts and more peanut butter.  Just experiment to find your perfect mixture.

The Assembly:

So, it's pretty simple.  Take a bit of dough, about the size of a large gumball (the kind you used to be able to find at the giant gumball machines at malls).  Flatten it out.  I discovered that the best shape is sort of like an oval.  Flatten it to about the thickness of a thin pancake (not a crepe, a thin pancake).  Now take some Filling (I just used my fingers--if your filling is creamier than mine, you might need to wet your fingers so they don't stick; or try to use a spoon).  The amount of Filling is up to you.  I think I used just about 1/4 tsp.  It was enough that when I folded the dough over, the farthest ends just met.  Then seal it all around (sort of like jiaozi/gyoza/potstickers).  Now, smooth the corners to either direction and take the whole thing and roll it into a round ball.  And there you have it.

Cooking:

Now it's time to cook!  No matter what Filling you choose, this is the traditional way of cooking tong yuen.  Bring a pot of water to a boil (how much depends on how many you're cooking) and add slices of ginger.  Drop in the dumplings and cook until they float.  Add some brown sugar, either directly into the pot, or in your bowl (I find about a Tbsp of brown sugar in my bowl is just about right), fish out the dumplings, and you're ready to eat!

If you haven't eaten them all by now, you can freeze the rest.  It's simple.  I put them on a paper plate.  You can probably line a place or baking sheet with wax paper, foil, parchment paper, what have you, and freeze them.  Once they're frozen, you can take them all and store them in a plastic bag.

To cook from frozen, you just need to give them a few minutes after they float.  3-5 should be enough.

Good Luck!  This will be a great hit at your next dinner party, or even just a "last minute" dessert for a night alone (like it was for me =).