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cut sweet potatoes into small size (leave the skin on) and steam over half-pot boiling water until the sweet potatoes are soft***
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when the sweet potatoes are soft, leave them to cool before removing the skin (you will burn your finger if you do it when the sweet potatoes are too hot) and keep the water in the pot
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after the sweet potatoes are cooled, remove the skin and mash them with a fork
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leave the mashed sweet potatoes around 10-20 minutes to evaporate the moisture
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add in caster sugar and vanilla extract into mashed sweet potatoes and mix well
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add in flour bit by bit, knead the mixture every time after adding the flour
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add the flour until a soft dough is formed (the dough no longer sticks to your finger)****
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prepare a big plate lined with baking paper
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roll the pieces of dough into small balls with your palm, then flatten the ball with your thumb and put a bit of filling in the centre
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seal the balls and roll again into round balls, then place on the prepared plate
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remain to form the balls with the remaning dough
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when the dough is half way done, boil the reserved water until boiling (while waiting the water to boil, continus to form the balls)
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after all the dough is done (the water should be boiling now), drop the balls into boiling water until they float to surface
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remove the floated balls with a strainer (try to shake off excess water)
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coat the round balls with dessicated coconut
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share with your friends or have them by yourself !!!
PS: it is better to finish all the ondeh ondeh within the day they are prepared. The skin will become hard after refrigerated overnight.
Here are some tips for this recipe:
* You can use pandan juice (blend 2 pandan leaves with 2 tsp of water then strain the juice out), or ginger juice (grated ginger and sqeeze the juice)
** The amount of flour you need to use depend on how wet is your mashed potatoes and how much vanilla extract you put in, more flour is needed for mashed potatoes with high water content
*** You can steam the sweet potatoes by putting the pandan left and crushed ginger to give more favourite (my mum teached me this)
**** If the dough is too hard (accidentally put in too much flour), you can add some water (bit at a time, you dont want to end up with a huge dough)
***** food colouring can be added to make colourful ondeh ondeh (divide your dough into portions and mix with different colours)
The following are photos of my ondeh ondeh i made for my Malay friend during Hari Raya
Step 1: Steaming sweet potatoes with pandan leaf and crushed ginger
Step 10: Green (green colouring) and orange balls are ready to go into boiling water
Final Product
This is a very versatile dish, u can let ur creation goes wild to form different dough (using pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes, using starch flour instead of rice flour, etc), using jam or nutella for the filling, etc.
So far, i had used ginger juice instead of vanilla extract and it is really good for winter. I had tried corn flour, starch flour and plain flour, however, the glutinuous rice flour gives the best texture. I also put grated dark chocolate for the filling and it turns out as good as the original gula melaka version.
Okies, that's all for my "opening" recipe, hope you will like it and try to make it. Let me know if you find out any variation is good. Looking forward to see you again.
