Chinese-Style Daffodil Shaped Dumplings

If you love Spring and want to create a visually beautiful dish to serve your friends and family, these Daffodil Shaped Dumplings are for you!

About This Recipe

I absolutely love daffodils. They are the epitome of Spring for me, and are simply beautiful. So, after doing some trial and error, I created these daffodil shaped dumplings on a bed of spinach leaves!

Making dumplings is such a fun activity and actually pretty therapeutic. The recipe and ingredients for these dumplings are my own, however, the shape for these dumplings were inspired by Kristina Cho, aka Eat Cho Food. She made a wonderful dumpling dish creating a four leaf clover shape. I thought I’d recreate them into a daffodil style dumpling! 

The 3-Ingredient Dough

For these cute dumplings, the dough only requires three ingredients: plain flour, warm water, and yellow food colouring. 

For the food colouring, you can either use artificial food colouring or turmeric which is a natural way to dye the dough. You want to make sure you don’t put too much into the dough, otherwise it might change the taste!

Filling The Daffodil Shaped Dumplings

The dumpling filling is simple but doesn’t compromise on flavour. To cater for all foodies, I’ve provided a recipe for meat-eaters and a recipe for vegans! 

For the pork filling, combine pork mince, spring onions, cabbage, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce, sugar, salt, & pepper. Add a little bit of cornstarch to velvet the mixture (this tenderises the meat), and then combine the ingredients into a paste.

For the vegan filling, combine spring onions, cabbage, mushrooms, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, salt, and pepper. You want to make sure you’ve drained all the vegetables of any water! Then add the wet mixture and a dash of cornstarch to thicken up the mixture. 

The Daffodil Fold

As I mentioned earlier, this dumpling fold was created by Eat Cho Food. Although it might look technical, with a bit of practice, you'll be making these shapes in no time!

Place a teaspoon of the filling into the centre of the wrapper. Pinch a quarter of the wrapper up into the centre and repeat to form 4 leaves.

Pinch at the centre and then spread out the leaves.

You then want to pinch half-way down the leaf with the neighbouring leaf. This will create a mini hole in the central area of the flower. Repeat this for every leaf.

Once you have your 4 little holes in the centre, lightly squeeze the larger leaves just above the filling to seal the dumpling to keep in the moisture. If you're struggling to make the pattern, check out my Instagram where you'll find a video on how to fold these dumplings!

The Ultimate Dipping Sauce

Dipping sauces are totally optionally, but in my opinion, the best bit! This recipe is super simple, with only 4 ingredients. 

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• ½ tablespoon sesame oil 
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoon laoganma crispy chilli oil (if you’ve never tried this, you must!)

The end result is a sweet, tangy, and slightly spicy sauce. 

Cooking & Serving

Place the dumplings in a metal or bamboo steamer. Cook them for around 5 to 6 minutes. Remove them from the steamer and plate them up on a bed of spinach. Drizzle over the sauce and enjoy!

Want More Dumpling Recipes?

Check Out My Dumpling World Tour Series

I've set myself a challenge to go around the world in 80 dumplings. Why? Because so many countries share a love for dumplings and every country’s dumplings have their own unique twist. From Vareneki in Ukraine to Banh Bot Loc in Vietnam, dumplings are a way for us to celebrate various cultures and culinary differences from all parts of the globe.

Not all my dumpling recipes are up on my website, yet! So, if you’d like to check them out, head on over to my Instagram for the video tutorial and full recipe!