Red Bean Mochi

I LOVE mochi! Mochi is a sweet rice cake made from sweet rice flour. To be more exact, I actually made daifuku “a soft round mochi stuffed with sweet filling, such as sweetened red bean paste”. 

I picked up everything I would need to make a batch back in January in Seattle. When I went back to my Google Reader and looked at the recipe on Just Jenn, I was a little hesitant… She made it sound awful, in fact she advised you just go and buy it instead! :o(  When I read the recipe, it just didn’t sound that difficult.

Thank goodness my sister Theresa made it first and blogged about it. She seemed to even enjoy making them, so I gave it a go…

The one thing both mentioned was the stirring… Apparently you have to stir hard and fast and it ain’t easy! No problem, I have three strapping young teenage sons. I just posed it as a, “I need to stir this but you have to be really strong to do it and I’m not sure I can” and I had an enthusiastic volunteer to do it for me. In hindsight I’m pretty sure I could have done it myself but it was fun to have some help. Thanks Andy!

So, here’s all you need to do to make your very own mochi…

3 1/2 cups water

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp food coloring

1 box Mochiko (sweet rice flour)

1 bag of red bean paste (An)

potato starch

First dust your cutting board generously with potato starch. Mochi is like glue, you’re going to need lots of potato starch. Then pre-form your red bean paste into little blobs. This will save you a lot of time later. Make bigger blobs if you’re making bigger mochi or small blobs for bite-sized mochi. (I did some of each)

Then put the water into a large saucepan with the sugar and bring to a boil.

Add the food coloring and remove from heat.

Immediately stir in the entire box of Mochiko. This is the part where you stir. Stir hard and fast! It will get really hard to stir but keep stirring… Stir until it is smooth and sticky. This part is kind of like a funky science experiment. I’m pretty sure you’ve never made anything this texture before. :o)

Quickly dump the mochi onto the dusted cutting board.

Dust the top of the pile of mochi with more potato starch.

Scrape the pot as well as you can and then start it soaking in the sink right away!

Cut off piece of mochi with well potato-starched hands.

       Shape it into a flat piece.

Place the red bean paste in the middle of the mochi and wrap it around the bottom.

Shape into a ball.

This recipe makes a lot of mochi! So just keep making them… (I made 50)

Store them in the freezer. Take them out to thaw before eating.