Hanami Dango

Have you ever wondered what this emoji is 🍡? It called Hanami* Dango (pronounced hah-nah-me dahng- go) and is typically eaten in japan, in mid march to early april, when the sakura** trees are blooming. Its a sweet dumpling thats made of Japanese glutinous*** rice flour. Traditionally, they have one pink one white and one green dumpling on a skewer, which symbolizes the stages that the sakura goes through.
First the green, which symbolizes when it was just a leaf.
Then white, which symbolizes the bud. (They are white before blooming)
And last but not least, pink, which symbolizes the sakura when it’s fully bloomed and ready to fall off the tree!
Pretty awesome, right? Well i’m going to take you through a step by step recipe on how to make this delicious Japanese sweet!
Yields: 7 sticks


* Hanami , is Japanese for “ flower viewing”, hana meaning flower and mi meaning viewing.

** Sakura is the proper way of saying “cherry blossom”

***Japanese glutinous rice flour, is flour made from japanese short grain, white rice, which is very sticky and, well “glutinous”. Don’t be fooled by the name “Glutinous”, because it doesn’t actually have gluten in it, it just means that when it’s cooked, it gets all sticky and very glue like.

Now for the supplies, you are going to need:
120g ( a cup) of rice flour ( please take note that you need BOTH glutinous rice flour AND just plain rice flour)

120g (a cup) of sweet glutinous rice flour ( such as mochiko or Shiratamako)

120g ( half a cup+ scant two tablespoons) of sugar

175 ml ( 3/4 cup) of hot water

Red food coloring

Green food coloring

7 inch bamboo skewers

Mix all the rice flour, plus the sugar together in a bowl.
Add the hot water SLOWLY, in small increments, mixing thoroughly in between. You don’t want to add all the water at once, because it will get all mushy.
Keep doing this until the consistency is like an “earlobe”.
I know , kinda funny way to describe something, but, hey it works!

Divide the dough into 3 equal parts, add red to one , green to and just leave the last one white.
Get out a medium saucepan and start boiling water in it.

Now starting with white, roll the dough into a cylinder, and cut out equal balls.
Roll them in between your palms to round them out a bit.
Once the water is boiling, add the dough to it.
Repeat for the next two colors.
Tip: put the white dough, then the pink then green last, to avoid them getting stained with a darker color.

Once the balls float to the top of the water, let them sit like that for another two minutes, then put them in a bowl of ice water to cool.
Then add the next color.

Now let them cool, and stick them on your skewers, green first, then white, and
Lastly, pink!
Itadakimas!
Tip: don’t panic if they're not completely round, i mean there going to be eaten anyway!
Also don’t panic if they don’t work the first time, or the second, the first time i made them, they turned out to be a sticky, goopy mess!