Having tried my hand at making cornstarch clay and salt dough clay, I have become to like their charm that comes directly from being “non-permanent”. The salt dough has the most opaque and rustic feel, corn starch dough has a smooth and slightly translucent feel. But then I wanted to make more translucent clay. As I searched around for the ways to do it, I came across the dumpling recipe, called har-gow. Traditionally, wheat starch is used for making its wrappers- and when the dumplings are cooked, they become translucent – almost transparent – giving the dish the appropriate nickname of crystal dumplings.

Wheat flour is easy and cheap to get in Chinese grocery stores, but during this extraordinary time of coronavirus, getting to one of those (which will require me to take public transportation for pretty long time) is not an option – and prices for wheat flour on Amazon was sort of ridiculously higher than what it normally is. I just couldn’t do it. With little bit more of search, I saw some people’s alternative for wheat flour – such as using potato starch and tapioca flour. (Well, funny thing is when I went to my local grocery store and bought potato starch and tapiocal flour, together it was almost the price of wheat starch on Amazon. So yeah, maybe I should have bought the good old wheat starch on Amazon.)

Materials

• 1/4 cup + 1 TBSP potato starch
• 2 TBSP salt
• 1 TBSP baking soda
• 1 cup water

Instruction