Christmas Dumplings
Beautiful Christmas colored dumplings filled with brie, feta, walnuts, pine nuts, fresh herbs and apple topped with a very special spicy cranberry sauce
Equipment
- 1 Meyer Spark Set I've used the Stainless Steel Small Stockpot, Nonstick Saucepan and Nonstick Large Frypan
- Steamer
- Pan
- Chopping Board
- Knife
- Dumpling cutter or a circle cookie cutter
- Medium-sized mixing bowl
- Rolling Pin
- 1 Pizza Cutter
- 1 Dumpling Stamping Tool
Ingredients
For The Red Dumpling Wrappers
- 1 cup Unbleached, organic, all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup Hot water you want the texture of the dough to be soft, and malleable. If it is too soft and sticky, add a tsp of flour at a time. If it is too hard, add a tsp of water to soften.
- 1/2 tsp Red food colouring you can opt for your own brand, I used store-bought, but there are several ways you can make natural homemade food colouring. It just takes a lot longer, and the colours wont be as vibrant. You can juice spinach to create green, and juice cranberries to make red.
For The Green Dumpling Wrappers
- 1 cup Unbleached, organic, all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup Hot water
- 1/2 tsp Green food colouring you can opt for your own brand, I used store-bought, but there are several ways you can make natural homemade food colouring. It just takes a lot longer, and the colours wont be as vibrant. You can juice spinach to create green, and juice cranberries to make red.
For The Stuffing
- 1/3 cup Brie minced
- 1/3 cup Feta minced
- 1/3 cup Walnuts minced
- 1/3 cup Pine nuts minced
- 1/3 cup Apple minced
- 1-2 tbsps Fresh dill minced
- 1-2 tbsps Fresh mint minced
For The Spicy Cranberry Sauce
- 2 red Chillies chopped
- 1 tsp Lemon juice
- 1 cup Fresh cranberries
- 1 cup Water room temperature
- 3-4 Mint leaves
- 1/3 cup Brown cane sugar
- 1/3 cup Cava Spanish sparkling wine, I used Vilarnau
Instructions
For The Dumpling Wrappers
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, add the flour, set aside.
- In another small bowl, gently pour the food colouring into the hot water and stir it in
- Pour the coloured water into the bowl of flour, while stirring the mixture using chopsticks or a fork
- Once the dough is shaggy, start kneading the dough until smooth
- Cover the dough using a damp cloth, and let it rest for 10 minutes at room temperature.
- After 10 minutes, remove the damp cloth and place it on a flour-dusted, clean, flat surface.
- Roll the dough out until it is about half a centimeter in height
- Using a pizza cutter, split the dough into strips, like noodles
- Use a generous amount of flour to ensure the strips don't stick together
- Now, assemble each red strip against each green strip, one slightly on top of the other strip's edge, to create the alternating colour wrapper sheet. If the edges are dry, brush a little water on the edges to make them 'stick'
- Once again, generously dust the flour over the wrapper sheet, and roll it out to make it all stick together, and to ensure the wrappers are thin enough.
- Try flipping the wrapper sheet over to ensure the front and back are fully coated with flour to ensure it does not stick to the surface of your kitchen counter.
- Using a 5-7cm in diameter cookie cutter, cut the sheet into 8 circles. Remove the excess dough and roll it up to use again (it will look like Christmas tie-dye, but that is ok!) Repeat the circle cut with as much of the dough as you can.
- Before you prepare the dumpling, you have to ensure that the wrapper is as thin as possible. Dumplings taste better when its a very thin layer of wrapper, and a lot of stuffing. You can do this by rolling each wrapper out a little more until it reaches 1/4 cm in height. Remember to keep dusting the bottom and top surface of the wrapper so it does not stick to the surface of the tabletop.
- Once you have the perfect dumpling wrapper, place 1 hefty tsp of stuffing right in the center of the dumpling wrapper and start wrapping away! In my video on IG, I have used a dumpling stamp, which really helps for those who need to make dumplings quickly. You can get that in my Amazon store
For The Stuffing
- In a medium sized bowl add the brie, feta, apple, and herbs.
- Using the Nonstick Large Frypan (28cm), toast the walnuts and pine nuts until light brown.
- Add the toasted nuts to the bowl of brie and mix all the ingredients together. Set aside.
Wrapping Your Dumplings
- I have used the dumpling stamper for some of the dumplings, but you can use your own hands to pleat the wrappers yourself.
- Watch my IG video and see how the butterfly shape is made. You can wrap your dumplings in 4 different ways. See notes for more information. You can always use water to soften the edges and make your wrappers stick together.
Cooking Your Dumplings
- To ensure you never get soggy dumplings, I always wrap the lid of my steamer with a dish cloth. This helps absorb any water that condenses and prevents the water from dripping onto my dumplings.
- You can either steam your dumplings or pan-fry them. When you steam them, it will cook in 10 minutes, and when you pan-fry them, be sure to add some oil, cornstarch and water that covers about 1/3 of your dumplings. Cover the lid and your dumplings will cook leaving that beautiful golden crust at the very bottom of the dumplings.
- I used my Stainless Steel Small Stockpot (4.7L) to steam my dumplings
Spicy Cranberry Jelly
- In the Nonstick Saucepan (1.9L), add all the ingredients together and mix thoroughly.
- Let the mixture reach a bubbling boil, before you reduce the heat to a simmer, and cover the saucepan with the lid.
- This mixture will reduce to a jelly after 30 minutes. Keep checking it to ensure it reaches the perfect consistency.
Notes
Wrapping your dumplings:
- The video is the best way to see how you can wrap your dumplings.
- Don't leave your dumplings out in the humidity too long, or it will go crusty. If you need a little more time, be sure to cover them with a cloth to maintain the moisture
- For the dumplings that you won't be cooking, you can always store them in the freezer and steam whenever you want
- Be sure to freeze them individually as placing them together can make it difficult for you to defrost the dumplings, and break them apart. It will result in tearing.
- Enjoy making your dumplings!