Ondeh-Ondeh

Ondeh-Ondeh is a tiny little ball made by glutinous rice flour with the filling of either gula melaka, palm sugar and brown sugar or fried grated coconut. It is then cooked like Tang Yuan (汤圆) then coated with fresh grated coconut. I like the one with sugar filling. It is a wonderful sensation when you pop a whole ondeh-ondeh ball into your mouth, bite down, and have the juicy melted sugar gush out!


Melted sugar mixture inside the ondeh-ondeh ball.....yum!! yum!!!

I made Ondeh-Ondeh as one of the snacks for a Tzu Chi couple's wedding ceremony 2 years ago. About 400pcs. Crazy...huh?? The most time consuming process was to grate the fresh coconut. Don't worry, Tom helped me out!! LOL!! Thank you honey! :-p



There are few students in Tzu Chi Still Thought class who come from Southeast Asia families. I was surprised when they told me they like ondeh-ondeh. So, I promised to make some for them this week.

Ingredients :

A)
1. 50g tapioca starch
2. dash of salt
3. 40ml pandan juice - blended from 10 pandan leaves, don't forget to sieve it.
4. 180ml water (220ml if you don't have fresh pandan juice)
5. 1 tbsp vegetable oil

B)
1. 280 Glutinous rice flour
2. 1/2 tsp pandan paste (1tsp if you don't have fresh blended pandan juice on ingredient A)
3. Green food color (optional)

C) Filling
1. 3 tbsp spoon pure Palm Sugar mix with 2 tbsp brown sugar.

D) Coating
1. 80g fresh grated coconut
2. dash of salt

Steps :

1. Mix all ingredients A together in a non stick pot.
2. Cook mixture A over medium low heat until the runny tapioca liquid turns to a translucent dough, stir frequently. DO NOT bring it to boil.
3. Remove the tapioca dough from heat, immediately pour it into glutinous rice flour.
4. With a spatula/spoon, stir to mix the tapioca and rice flour until well combined. Add in the pandan paste and food color gradually. The dough will turn out like 汤圆dough but more sticky.
5. Dust your hands and work surface with some flour, divide the dough into 1" balls. Flatten it with the ball of your thumb, spoon some palm sugar mixture in the middle of the circle and roll it to a ball.
6. Broil a pot of water, add in the ondeh-ondeh, cook it over medium heat. When you see the ondeh-ondeh is floating, cook for another 3 minutes, then scoop out from the broiled water.
7. Immediately drop it into a bowl of ice water. Soak for 30 seconds. (This step is optional, the ondeh-ondeh will be more springy if you put it through the ice water bath, you may skip this step if you want your ondeh-ondeh softer)
8. Remove the ondeh-ondeh by a strainer, lightly pat the ondeh-ondeh with paper towel.
9. Then coat the ondeh-ondeh with the grated coconut.

Palm Sugar I used, Tapioca dough before mix with glutinous rice flour



Glutinous rice flour & tapioca mixture, ondeh-ondeh balls before cooking.