Kawaii Character Dango (Deco Dango)
Dango are round Japanese rice dumplings, often put on skewers. These instructions show you how to make your dango into cute characters, like anpanman.
Equipment
Ingredients
- 50 g shiratamako
- 50 g joshinko See notes for substitutions
- 120 g silken tofu See notes for substitutions
- gel food coloring
- sweet topping of choice See notes
Instructions
- Whisk silken tofu until no solid lumps remain and tofu is liquidy.
- Add shiratamako and joshinko and knead until a soft dough forms. You are looking for a consistency similar to Play Doh, easily sculpted and able to hold its shape. If dough is too dry and hard, you can add more tofu or water. If dough is too wet, add more rice flour until desired consistency is met.
- Separate dough and dye each section using 1-2 drops gel food coloring, kneading the dough to disperse the color. For Anpanman dango, I separated two 20g balls of dough and dyed each orange and red. I left the remainder white.
- Create your dango. You can have fun scultping whatever you'd like and experimenting with different creations. For Anpanman, divide the remaining white dough into 12 balls. Take a small piece of red dough and roll into a nose. Take two small pieces of orange dough and roll into two spheres for the cheeks. If your dough is wet enough, they will adhere just by pressing lightly. If you notice your dough becoming dry, you can adhere the pieces with water. Overall, aim to have your finished dango be around 15-20g (around 1 tbsp in volume) or about the size of a very large grape.
- Bring a large pot of water to boil. Gently place your dango into the boiling water (I use a slotted spoon or spatula to do this). When dango float to the top, they are finished cooking, about 4-5 minutes. Scoop your dango out and let cool.
- If desired, you can skewer your dango. You can serve dango with a sweet topping like brown sugar syrup or red bean paste. Alternatively, you can use dango as a topping for other desserts, like shaved ice. Dango need to be eaten the day they are made, as they quickly dry out.
Notes
- In general, to make the dough, you are looking for about a 50/50 ratio of rice flour to tofu or water. You can use all shiratamako, which is a glutinous rice flour that results in a very soft texture. I like to use a combination of shiratamako and joshinko, which results in a firmer bite. You can also use dangoko, which is a premixed combination of shiratamako and joshinko. I find that dangoko tends to be drier for some reason, and when I use dangoko I need to add much more tofu.
- You can use water instead of silken tofu.
- If you are making dango that has a more oblong shape (i.e. not a sphere), you can assemble it onto pieces of parchment paper. When boiling, slide the entire piece of parchment into the boiling water. The parchment will naturally fall off the dango as it cooks, and you can fish it out.