All Natural Tie Dye ( aka Watercolour / Galaxy ) Dumpling Wrappers
THIS POST IS FOR MAKING THE DUMPLING WRAPPERS ONLY. IF YOU NEED FILLING IDEAS, I GOTCHU! SEE MY LINKS TO MY TWO FAV DUMPLING RECIPES BELOW.
After posting these TIE DYE DUMPLING WRAPPERS on instagram, I decided to post the recipe and how-to here on the blog as well for anyone interested in having a bit of fun with their dumpling dough, too. Don’t be intimated. Adding natural colours to dumpling dough is easier than it looks. You start by creating a coloured liquid in a colour of your choice, which can take as little as a few minutes to do, then proceeding as you would normally for mixing and kneading dumpling dough. The coloured dough can be used by itself for a single-colour wrapper. But if you’re feeling extra, you can use them in combination with each other to create the tie-dye effect shown in this post. I’m going to explain how to do this. Spoiler alert: it’s more or less just twisting different coloured ropes of dough together a couple of times. Read on. You can do this!
For this particular combo, I made a plain dough with plain water, a green dough with baby spinach purée and a blue dough using butterfly pea flower powder. For other colours, it’s really as easy as an internet search for “natural food colour” and a little bit of fun experimentation in the kitchen. I posted these pink tie-dye dumplings on Insta using freeze-dried pink pataya powder recently too.
MY GO-TO DUMPLING FILLINGS:
Once you make your wrappers, you’re gonna need to fill them up with deliciousness! Here are my ultimate favourites and on the blog:
HEAD NOTES
VOLUME VS WEIGHT: For baking recipes or recipes for dough such as dumpling dough, my preference is to weigh out ingredients on a kitchen scale rather than by volume (in cups and tbsps, etc). Weighing is the most accurate and best way especially for scaling recipes up or down. I love my OXO scale and have had it for many years so to me, it’s a great investment. That said, I have included volume measurements below in case you prefer it - just don’t mind the slightly odd looking measurements from the conversion! As always when working with any dough, be conservative about the liquid you add and give it time to incorporate as you knead. But be ready to add tiny more splashes of liquid as you knead, as necessary. You want the dough to end up with no dry spots after kneading and malleable, but not overly wet or else they will be difficult to handle and difficult to wrap dumplings with. Refer to my CHINESE VEGGIE DUMPLING POST for details and lots of photo guidance regarding making perfect dumpling wrappers..
1-2 HOUR REST TIME is ideal for dumpling dough. The rest makes the dough easier to handle. It would be a good time to make your filling while the dough rests.
HAVE YOUR FILLING READY AND WORK IN BATCHES. With dumpling dough, you want to roll out the wrappers in batches of maybe 5-10 wrappers at a time, otherwise they dry out if laying around before you fill them and you’ll have cracks as you’re wrapping them or have issues pleating.
10”-11” ROLLING PIN. It is much easier to roll out dumpling wrappers using a small rolling pin about 1” diameter and 10-11” long. They are cheap and can be purchased online.
Tie Dye ( aka Watercolour / Galaxy ) Dumpling Wrappers
Makes about 80-85 dumpling wrappers, which is enough for about 6 cups worth of filling.
Special equipment: 10”-11” long 1” diameter rolling pin.
Ingredients
For the plain dough:
155ml warm water, plus tiny splashes more as needed
317g (2C + 3 tbsp) all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
For the green dough:
50g (a big handful) baby spinach leaves
80ml (1/3C) boiling water
160g (1C + 5 tsp) all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
For the blue dough:
1/2 tsp butterfly pea flower powder (I used this brand)
80ml (1/3C) warm water
160g (1C + 5 tsp) all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
Method
Make the plain dough: Place the all-purpose flour in a medium sized bowl set over a damp kitchen towel to keep the bowl from moving around. Drizzle the water into the bowl in a steady stream while constantly stirring with a spatula or pair of chopsticks. Once incorporated, the dough should still look a bit scraggly with some loose, dry bits throughout. Refer to this post if you want step-by-step images of dough consistency. Start kneading the dough with your hands, only sprinkling teeny bits of water over very dry areas as needed (I actually like to dampen my hands instead of drizzling into the dough as I find it more effective). Knead for 8-10 minutes until very smooth. Shape the dough into a ball and allow to rest 15 minutes under a tea towel. Knead again for 3 minutes. Drizzle a tiny bit of oil into the mixing bowl and roll the dough ball around to lightly coat all over. Wrap tightly in plastic food wrap and rest for at least 1-2 hours.
Make the green dough: Place spinach in a bowl and pour boiling water over it to wilt the leaves. Use an immersion blender to purée the leaves until smooth. (Tip: if you don’t have an immersion blend, you can use a mini food processor or blender. In that case, it would be easier to double the amount of spinach and boiling water to have enough volume to properly blend in those. Freeze the extras in ice cube tray or in a glass jar for next time, or for smoothies). Strain out the larger spinach bits. If you’ve lost some liquid from straining, just make sure you top up to 80ml or 1/3C of liquid by adding a little plain water. Follow the same steps as above now to make the dough using your spinach water instead of plain water. The green is subtle at first but becomes apparent as you knead the dough.
Make the blue dough: Dissolve the butterfly pea flower powder in the water until (mostly) dissolved - some undissolved bits is fine. Follow the same steps as the plain one now to make the dough using your blue water instead of plain water. Again, the blue is subtle at first but becomes apparent as you knead the dough.
Creating Tie-Dye Dough: (Tip: With dumpling dough, you want to roll out the wrappers in batches of maybe 5-10 at a time, otherwise they dry out if laying around before you fill them and you’ll have cracks as you’re wrapping them or have issues pleating.). Have a dish filled with plain water on hand to help bind the dough ropes together. Cut the three dough balls into 4 manageable pieces. Note that the plain one should be double the size of the coloured ones. Take one cut piece of each dough (i.e one plain, one blue, one green) and re-wrap the remaining to keep from drying out. Using your palms, roll the three pieces out into long ropes. The plain one should be about 3/4” diameter. The blue and green ropes should be thinner and quite a bit longer as you’re now going to coil them both around the shorter/thicker plain one. Dampen the palms of your hands with water and roll the dough ropes along with gentle squeezing until the three hold together as one tri-coloured rope about 1” in diameter. Using a small knife, it once down the length of the formed rope. Now take the two long pieces and twist them around each other firmly, squeezing gently as you do, to help them bind together. Dampen hands. Use the roll and squeeze technique again until the strands are well incorporated into one rope, about 1” diameter. The dough is ready to be cut into pieces for wrappers.
Rolling out wrappers: Cut the rope into 1 tbsp sized pieces or approximately 10g pieces. Dust your work surface. Take one piece of dough at a time and keep the remaining cut pieces covered. With cut-side facing up, use fingers to slightly shape the piece so it’s as round as possible. Place on surface and flatten it with the palm of your hand. Dust a small rolling pin to roll the dough into circles approximately 3½” in diameter, with the edges thinner than the centre of the wrapper. Enjoy seeing the tie-dye pattern emerge as you roll them out. Every one will be different and it’s the funnest part! Roll 5-10 at a time and fill them with your favourite dumpling filling.
Repeat the same steps for the remaining dough. Check out my Instagram on the Reels tab for a video of the above process!
If you like this recipe, pin it to Pinterest! You can also leave me a comment below to let me know what you think of this post - I would love that.