Baker wannabe : Onde-onde

2 April 2018

I made onde-onde. I know, I am shocked myself that I could do it. This has always been my favourite delicacy because I love it when the dark palm sugar oozes out when I bite into it. 

Nyonya are descendants of early Chinese migrants who settled in Penang, and Malacca, inter-marrying with local Malays and combines Chinese, Malay and other influences. Nyonya refers to the woman and the man is referred to as Baba. Source from wikipedia. Onde-onde is one of their delicacies. 

Onde-onde is boiled glutinous rice ball infused with pandan leaves extract, filled with palm sugar and rolled with dessicated coconut. I grinded the pandan leaves and got the natural green colouring. I got a 454g Thai palm sugar (SEK19/RM9.50) which is lighter in comparison to Malaysia's palm sugar. So, you can imagine how sad I was when I could not see any dark palm sugar oozing out. It was transparent instead. Nevertheless, it tastes like onde-onde! Success! I never imagined it was so easy to make it.

Recipe:

• 80g glutinous rice flour
• 10g tapioca flour (use lesser as it will result in the onde-onde being harder)
• Gula melaka / Palm sugar - smashed into small pieces
• 25g sugar
• 60ml pandan leaf extract
• 50g desiccated coconut
• 1 tbsp water
• 1/2 tsp salt

Mix salt and desiccated coconut. Steam for 15-20 minutes. Add sugar to glutinous flour and tapioca flour. Add a little bit of pandan leaf extract and mix to dough. Keep adding the extract slowly until you get a nice dough. This needs your own estimation. I ensured mine was sticky but not very sticky.

Roll the dough into a long piece. Break into small bits. As I made this a couple of times, I got lazy into rolling to a long piece. I tore from the dough and rolled them onto my palm. Of course, the size varies in this method. 

Flatten each piece. Add small pieces of gula melaka. Ensure that they are really small and not huge chunks as it is easier to melt when it is small. Roll into a nice ball.

Put into a pot of boiling water. The balls are cooked when they float to the surface. Scoop out and mix or roll it around in the desiccated coconut. I got 17 balls of onde-onde.