A Golden Ball of Sweet Memories

A colleague of mine, Ryan, had a trip to Melaka and brought back some goodies. On top of the usual knick knacks, he got me a pack of red bean paste & gula melaka (palm sugar) too. Aww...how sweet. He knows that I love to bake, so it was really thoughtful of him. Me bake = he eat. Pretty good equation there, smart boy. Just kidding Ryan!

I have plans for the red bean paste, big plans......but for now, I'll tackle the gula melaka. The first thing that came to my mind was, onde onde! I remember how my grandma would make this for tea on weekends. I would linger by the sidelines, popping chunks of gula melaka into my mouth when grandma was occupied, and when caught, I would claim that I was only trying to chase the flies away. Ahh......reminisce reminisce.

Grandma would always make the green variety, using pandan leaves as a natural colouring agent. And so I thought that will be the way to go for me too. But I did a little search online and found 2 other recipes, one called Black Beauty Onde Onde, using black glutinous flour and the other Sweet Potato Onde Onde, using mashed sweet potato. I decided to give the latter a try, thanks to this recipe. (I substituted coconut flavoured evaporated milk with plain evaporated milk. Maybe next time I'll use fresh santan.)

It took most of my afternoon, but the effort was well worth it. I 'learned' quite a few things, for one - don't bother weighing the flour when the recipe calls for 600g and you're using a 500g pack. Alas, I had a blonde moment.....

I also learnt that I need to be more careful when shaping the onde onde. It's important to pinch close the edges neatly or the gula melaka will leak out. As a result of my carelessness, I had to eat about a dozen of my 'defects'. Haha..

a golden ball of sweet memories

ready for boiling
the green specks are bits of pandan leaves

mashed sweet potatoes and chopped gula melaka

I still have a couple of blocks of gula melaka left. What to do with them? Let me get back to you on that one. ;)