Peanut soup for 冬至

This is ah balling, tang yuan in peanut soup for winter solstice. No brainer for tang yuan, comes out of a packet. But the peanut took lots of work. I read on the internet that no matter how long you slow cook peanuts, they remain hard. I came across this recipe and thought I'd give it a try:

http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com.au/2008/08/introductory-text-picture-goes-here.html

Problem is that despite following the instructions, I still lacked the pressure cooker, so it didn't work! So even though I soaked the peanuts overnight, soaked them in alkaline water, but without the pressure cooker, it's all useless. Nonetheless, it's a great accompaniment for the tang yuan for Dong Zhi, which was really the whole point of the exercise anyway.

Ingredients
300g peanuts
10 cups of water
1/2 cup of rock sugar (top up to taste)
1 tbsp baking powder (perhaps I should have used pure bicarb like the recipe?)

Method

1) Soak the peanuts overnight.

2) Soak the peanuts in the alkali solution for at least 4 hours. Rinse and soak for half hour to remove the alkali, then rinse and soak again. Repeat once more.

3) Here, I slow cooked with 6 hours. The recipe recommends pressure cooking for 30 to 40 minutes from pressurisation. Unfortunately the volume of my pressure cooking is quite small but next time I'll give it a try.

4) Serve with tang yuan!