Onde Onde

I like eating onde onde a lot. It is probably one of my favourite nonya desserts.

Onde onde (or sometimes spelt as ondeh ondeh) is a sweet snack made out of sweet potatoes with gula melaka (brown palm sugar) in the centre, rolled with fresh grated coconut.

I like the "popping" sensation one gets when eating onde onde. The melted gula melaka bursts out from the skin of the onde onde and mixes very well with the fresh coconut. As a child, onde onde was what I imagine Pop Biscuits to be like when I read the Faraway Tree.

I didn't know that onde onde is so simple to make.. until the class at A's place on Saturday.

All you really need is:
- Sweet Potatoes
- Glutinous Rice Flour
- Pandan Leaves and Green Food Colouring
- Grated Fresh Coconut (mix with a little salt)
- Gula Melaka

To make the "skin" of the onde onde, boil some sweet potatoes with pandan leaves until very soft and then mash it up well. Add an equal part of glutinous rice flour and knead the sweet potatoes and flour together, adding water until you get a firm dough. Add the green food colouring to the dough. If you like, you can add a bit of the juice of pandan leaves for better flavour.

Then, roll the dough into little balls of equal sizes. Fill the dough with chopped gula melaka and then it's done!

All you then need to do is to put the little balls into a pot of hot water and when the water boils and the little balls float up, take them out and roll them on a bed of grated coconut.

Boil the sweet potatoes

Mash the sweet potatoes up well with 2 forks

Mix the sweet potatoes with the glutinous rice flour

Knead until the dough is smooth and then add the colouring

When the onde onde floats up, they are cooked

Roll the onde onde over a plate of grated coconut

The final product - homemade onde onde