How I Make Winnie The Pooh Inspired Rice Dumplings

Glutinous rice dumpling, called Tang yuan, is traditional Chinese food made from glutinous rice flour mixed with a small amount of water to form balls and is then cooked and usually served in ginger syrup.

It’s really fun to turn ordinary tang yuan to look special, so I’ll teach you how to make Winnie the Pooh and his cartoon friends’ dumplings.

By Peaceloving Pax

Learn how to make these Winnie the Pooh and friends dumplings

Firstly, you have to gather the ingredients for dumpling dough and filling

For dumpling dough you’ll need:
1. 1 cup of glutinous rice flour;
2. ½ cup of water (could be a little less or more depending on the brand of the flour);
3. food colouring/icing colours: yellow, orange, pink, blue and black.

For the filling (you can also make the dumplings without the filling if you want) you’ll need:
1. ½ cup of roasted and grounded black sesame seeds (roasting makes it aromatic, you can ground the seeds with a food processor);
2. 2 tablespoons of sugar (you can add more sugar if you prefer);
3. 2 tablespoons of coconut milk;
4. 1 tablespoon of peanut butter.

How to make the filling:
1. Mix grounded black sesame seeds, sugar and coconut milk together, add peanut butter and mix well;
2. Mold the mixture above into small balls, size around 1 cm in diameter.

Then you’ll have to make the dough

You have to mix glutinous rice flour and water together and knead well. The proper texture is similar to your ear lobe.

If some cracks are seen, this means the dough is too dry, add little water at a time to adjust. If the dough is too moist, you can add a little flour at a time.

Next step is coloring the dough

You have to divide the dough into 4 equal parts and 2 smaller parts, mix and knead each piece of the dough with small amount of each food colour (yellow, orange, pink, blue, deep pink for Eeyore’s ear and nose, and black for eyes) as seen in the picture.

Next – wrapping (if you don’t need the filling, you can skip this step)

First, mold the coloured dough into ball shape, 2.5-3 cm in diameter and turn it to flattened oval shape.
Then put the filling on the centre of the dough and wrap well into the ball shape.
Place each ball on the parchment paper separately (the parchment paper also helps to prevent the dough of flipping over when boiling).
You can eliminate some cracks or the rough surface by using very little amount of water and mold gently over the area with your finger tip.

Now, the fun part – decorating! Pooh

Decorating the Pooh you have to attach 2 small yellow dough bubbles for ears, very small black dough piece for nose and eyes and draw the eyebrows with a very fine brush or a toothpick.

Decorating – Piglet

Piglet – attach 2 small deep pink dough pieces for ears and very small pink dough bubble for nose. Tiny black dough pieces work for eyes and you have to draw the eyebrows with a very fine brush or a toothpick.

Decorating – Tigger

Tigger – attach ears (see how to make ears below), use 2 pieces of yellow dough for the face, pink dough for nose, black dough for eyes and eyebrows. I forgot to take a shot of tiger’s whiskers, but you can draw them with a fine brush.

How to make ears

It’s really simple. Just take little pieces of orange dough, place even smaller pieces of yellow dough on them and flatten a little.

Decorating – Eeyore

Eeyore – attach ears (make them the same way as Tigger’s), use black dough for eyes and hair, draw eye brows, nose and a vertical line.

Then leave the color set on the dough for a while and they’ll be ready to be boiled

Boil the dumplings

Firstly, boil a pot of water.
When the water is boiling, turn the heat to medium and gently put down the dumplings to the bottom of the pot and wait until they float up. As you boil, the parchment paper will separate from the dough, remove them from the pot.
Once the dumplings start floating, wait for 30secs to 1 min more to ensure that it is completely cooked.
Move the cooked dumplings to the bowl with water when they become sticky.

And you’re done!

Now you know how to make the cutest dumplings ever

Hope you enjoy :)