Rice Ball with Sweet Stuffing

Rice Ball with Sweet Stuffing

　　Rice Ball with Sweet Stuffing, a traditional Beijing snack, is usually offered by Beijing snack shops around the Lunar New Year and remains on sale until late summer or early autumn. As such, it is considered a seasonal snack for spring and autumn, but it is now available all year. This snack boasts a long history — as noted in the "Notes on the Inner Palace" by the Ming Dynasty eunuch Liu Ruoyu during the Wanli era: “Glutinous rice mixed with sesame is steamed into a cold cake, shaped into balls and filled to become '窝窝' — the same as the ancient '不落夹'.”

　　It’s clear that this food item is made by washing and soaking glutinous rice, then steaming it in a bamboo steamer, cooling it, and kneading it into a uniform dough. Small portions are pinched off, flattened into rounds, and wrapped around a filling of crushed walnuts, sesame seeds, melon seeds, green plums, hawthorn candy, and white sugar, which are mixed together. This creates the dish referred to as “窝窝” during the Ming Wanli era. But why did it later come to be known as “爱窝窝”? The answer can be found in the Qing Dynasty book "Rustic Proverbs Explained" by Li Guangting. It explains that an emperor loved this kind of 窝窝 so much that whenever he wanted to eat it, he would say, “Imperial-loved 窝窝.” When the snack later spread to the general public, ordinary people were neither able nor dared to use the word “imperial,” so they dropped the “御 (imperial)” and simply called it “爱窝窝.” This snack had already entered public life during the Ming Dynasty, and it was recorded among popular delicacies of the time in the Ming-era text "-".