Mochi!

I stopped by Val's house and her MIL LiFong was visiting.  LiFong makes some pretty amazing things but they were packing me out with some mochi... my family LOVES mochi, and it didn't occur to me that we could make it.  I asked her for the recipe and she said it was too easy and that she would just show me... right now.  So what started as a stop in for a lovely cuppa kombucha, ended up being an awesome lesson in mochi making.  But before I forget, I must write this down.

1:1 glutenous rice flour and a liquid... we used water, milk or other liquid can be used.  LiFong suggested 1c flour:1c water.

mix it up, cover it with saran wrap and pop it in the microwave for a minute.  Take it out and stir it hard with chopsticks.  Repeat for two additional minutes stopping after each minute - 30 seconds to stir.  It will be very glutenous-y, keep covered with saran.

In the mean-time toast a bit of powder, maybe .25c lightly:  we used cornstarch, she also suggests peanut powder, or soy powder.  Place on a plate.

Take about 2 teaspoons from the rice flour mix, as you pull your piece off, use the bowl and spoon to start to shape it into a ball.  Drop it onto the powder, then pick it up and sort of make a thick flat patty using the powder to keep it from sticking too much.  Take a tablespoon or so of the filling and place it in the middle of the paddy and sort of pull the edges up around the filling until it is completely enclosed. and voila!!

Fillings:  you can buy red bean paste, mix it with some heavy cream until a good consistency.  Alternatively you can get peanut powder, mix with some sugar and butter to make a filling, Mung bean or lotus seed also work well too.

Now voila... it really was easy and pretty fun to make a favorite. 

Update:  We've made these a few times now... in the pictures the brown powder is the soybean powder, kinda nutty, not O's favorite but really not bad.  THese have a limited shelf-life, by day 3 the mochi part becomes unpleasantly hard, so these don't keep as long as the ones you buy in the grocery store (meaning I can't make a batch and have it for lunches all week... sigh).  I did another variety with a fresh strawberry in the middle (Strawberry Daifuku) then the red bean and then the mochi on the outside and it was so yummy!