Klepon

Klepon

Klepon wrapped in banana leaf container
Alternative names	Onde-onde, Ondeh-ondeh
Type	Snack
Place of origin	Java, Indonesia
Region or state	nationwide in Indonesia, also can be found in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
Main ingredients	Rice cake, palm sugar (gula jawa/merah/melaka), grated coconut
Other information	none.

Klepon (pronounced Klê-pon) or Onde-onde is a traditional green-coloured balls of rice cake filled with liquid palm sugar and coated in grated coconut. The sweet glutinous rice balls is one of popular Indonesian kue, and it is commonly found in Indonesia,Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

It is a boiled rice cake, stuffed with liquid palm sugar (gula jawa/merah/melaka), covered in coconut bits. The dough is made from glutinous rice flour, sometimes mixed with tapioca. It is green because the glutinous rice dough is flavoured and coloured with a paste made from the leaf of pandan or dracaena plant (daun suji) — whose leaves are used widely in Southeast Asian cooking.

The small pieces of palm sugar initially was hard when it was inserted into glutinous rice dough and rolled into balls. The balls then being boiled, subsequently the palm sugar melted due to high temperature, creating a sweet liquid inside the balls' core. The balls then being rolled on grated coconut, thus the coconut bits stick to the sticky balls' surface.

One must be careful on consuming a klepon. Other than the bite could squirted and the ejected liquid palm sugar might stained the shirt, a freshly boiled one — which usually contains hot liquid palm sugar, should be consumed carefully or best to be left to cool down for some moment. Klepon traditionally served in banana leaf container, in traditional marketplaces they are sold in banana leaf package containing four or ten balls. Today however, they might be packed in plastic wrappings.

Klepon is Javanese name for this sweet glutinous rice balls. In other parts of Indonesia, such as in Sulawesi, Sumatra and in neighbouring Malaysia, it is mainly known as onde-onde or in some regions, 'buah melaka' (Malaccan fruit). In Java however, onde-onde refers to the Chinese Jin deui, a rice cake ball coated with sesame seeds and filled with sweet greenbean paste. Although popular across Southeast Asia, klepon may have originated in Java. The dish is also called as klepon in the Netherlands. In the 1950s, klepon was introduced by Indo immigrants to the Netherlands and is readily available in toko shops, Dutch or Chinese Indonesian restaurants and supermarkets throughout the country.