Sweet Dumplings

                            Sweet dumplings

There are so many Chinese traditional foods, among which I am very fond of sweet dumplings (Yuan Xiao). It is widely known that sweet dumplings are the characteristic food for the Lantern festival, which is on the 15th of the first lunar month, marking the end of celebrations of the New Year. Made of sticky rice flour filled with sweet stuffing and round in shape, it symbolizes family unity and happiness. Actually, there is a beautiful story about sweet dumplings spreading among the people in China.

     During the period of emperor Wu, in the Han dynasty, a maid for being in the deep palace named Yuan Xiao who was prevented from getting out the palace to reunite with her parents and carry out her filial duty. She was so sad that she want to suicide by jumping into a well. At this time, the scholar Dongfang Shuo happened to pass by the well, saved Yuan Xiao and succeeded to help her sneak out of the palace finally. People are moved deeply by the story of Yuan Xiao. In order to pay tribute her, sweet dumplings are called Yuan Xiao.

     After hearing my description to sweet dumplings, you may very curious about the way of making it. I will show you seven steps to make sweet dumplings. The practices are as follows:

Step1 Preparation of raw material: put the peanut and walnut into the microwave for two minutes, and then remove the peel

Step2 Chop up the peanut, walnut and stir-fry them evenly

Step3 Add some brown sugar and lard to stir-fry with peanut and walnut, making the fillings a little bit wet

Step4 Dish up the stir-fried fillings after seven or eight minutes

Step5 Mix the glutinous rice flour and warm water to a paste

Step6 Get the right size of dumpling dough round, then hollow out them and put the fillings into them, not too full

Step7 Twist into a polished glutinous nice balls and put them into a boiling pot, cooking for ten minutes or so

Made of glutinous rice flour, it tastes like rice cake. Its skin is pretty sticky and fillings are extremely sweet. Everyone will fall in love with it once they taste it.