Vibrant colour food are sometimes showstoppers, tho lets try to make it naturally coloured rather than piling on to food colourings. These onde onde are made with purple sweet potatoes instead of the normal orange ones. It does look a little more vibrant with purple sweet potatoes. Or maybe not quite comparing with the green pandan ones.

Because today is the first day of the Ramadhan month for muslims, I shall slot in a ‘Muhibbah Monday’ post. I made 2 things out of the seemingly attractive purple sweet potato; onde onde and choux puffs. Both very different type of food but with a little bit of creativity, there can also be some similarities between them. Today, of course is about the onde-onde, the one with burstful of melted gula melaka when you sink your teeth into it. For some of the gula melaka, I didn’t manage to get them fine enough, hence some onde onde had bits of gula melaka in it.

These purple sweet potato (Hrrmm seemed a bit more  red here, but my camera captures raw purple weirdly. It either becomes more blueish, or more reddish) are a fantastic source of anthocyanins (especially peonidins and cyanidins) and have outstanding antioxidant activity. In one study, the antioxidant activity in purple sweet potatoes was 3.2 times higher than that of a type of blueberry!

If you haven’t know what onde- onde (pronounced as own-day, own-day) is, it is one of the traditional Malay kuih (pastry) made with sweet potato or glutinous rice flour, then infused with pandan flavour and filled with gula melaka (palm sugar) then rolled in grated coconut. Which is why it is suitable for the Muhibbah Monday hosted by 3 hungry tummies and Test with skewers 😉

Purple sweet potato Onde-onde

(makes about 20-25 balls)

180g purple sweet potato, steamed, mashed
50g glutinous rice flour
20g cornflour
25g sugar
30-45ml water

Filling
80-100g crushed palm sugar (gula melaka)

Coating
Freshly grated coconut
pinch of salt

Method

1. Peel skin off purple sweet potato, cut into smaller pieces and steam till soft for 20 minutes, depending on the size. When cool enough to handle, mash the sweet potatoes with a fork or masher.

2. Combine mashed sweet potato with glutinous rice flour, corn flour, sugar and a little of the water to form a soft dough.

3. ?Mix the grated coconut with a pinch of salt and steam for about 2 – 3 minutes and let it cool completely.

4. Bring a pot of water to boil. Pinch a small piece of dough (about 15 g each) and flatten lightly. Fill the center of the dough with crushed palm sugar. Roll them to form a smooth ball and cook the onde-onde in the boiling water. When they float to the surface, remove them with a slotted spoon and shake off the excess water.?? Coat the ondeh ondeh with grated coconut and serve immediately.

*If you over steam your grated coconut, it turns brown! Unless you wanna have brown coconut, keep an eye when you steam the grated coconut*

 

Because these onde onde didn’t have any pandan, the aroma wasn’t that strong. But the earthy flavour of the sweet potato was lovely. Freshly grated coconut are much tastier than prepacked ones. They are more moist and aromatic. Now, onde-onde can be very pretty with the pandan green, yellow / orange sweet potato and purple variety.