Peanut Tang Yuan

Although it's Christmas eve, I'm going to take a step back in time and post about the Winter Solstice (Dongzhi) Festival that my family celebrated 3 days ago!

I have nothing but fond memories about this festival. When I was younger, my brother and I would help our grandma roll the tang yuans out. We'd make extra large ones for my dad and teenie-tiny ones for ourselves. According to my mum, who learnt it from her grandmother (who probably learnt it from her grandmother), the number of tang yuans that we had to eat needed to be in accordance with our age. BUT that does not mean that you have to stuff yourself with tang yuans as you grow older!! Like birthday candles, there are big and small ones. So if you're 43, you'd have 4 big ones and 3 tiny ones!

This year, instead of the normal plain ones, I decided to make tang yuans filled with peanuts. I prefer my peanut butter crunchy so, I roughly pounded the peanuts to obtain a coarser grounded peanut texture. But of course, you can use a food processor and finely ground the roasted peanuts.

Remember not to overfill your tang yuan or you'll witness some of them disastrously burst open! 

My brother took some pictures while I was making them and my brother being himself, didn't focus on my hands in any pictures! hehe BUT he's still the best helper/second-in-command/right-hand man I can ever ask for!

My brother decided to do his own adaptation and made a tiny one, a humongous one and marshmallow-shaped one.

As for the recipe, I followed a simple and clear recipe by Bee from Rasa Malaysia and you can find it here: Peanut Dumplings (花生汤圆)

Normally, tang yuans are served with sweet ginger soup. However, if you're not a big fan of ginger, use whatever tong sui (sweet soup) you'd like. I particularly like mine with hot soya milk!!

Anyway, hope you have a joyous Christmas tomorrow!
Merry Christmas!!! :D