I love mochi. It’s so easy to make too. You just need the right flour, but it’s easy to find on Amazon or at an Asian grocery store. So give it a try!
Red Bean Paste
🌱65g Azuki beans
🌱1/4 cup dates (50g)
🌱1/4 cup soy milk or liquid
🌱4 tbsp coconut butter*
Mochi
🌱1 cup glutinous rice flour
🌱1 cup water
🌱1/4 cup white powdered sugar or more
🌱~1 cup starch for handling the mochi
Coloring (optional)
🌱2 tbsp beet juice (squeezed from grated beet) for pink OR
🌱1/4 tsp turmeric powder for yelloe OR
🌱1/2 tsp spirulina powder for green OR
🌱1/2 tsp blue pea flower tea powder for blue
- Cook the beans and then blend with the rest of the ingredients. Use more liquid if necessary, but eliminate it afterwards by heating the paste in the microwave. It should be easy to form balls with little of it sticking to fingers.
- Roll the paste into balls using a measuring spoon to have them all the same size.
- Place them on a plate without touching and freeze them. It’s more convenient if you make them the day before.
- Take the bean balls out of the freezer, then start preparing the mochi.
- In a glass bowl that you can cover, whisk all the ingredients except the starch + coloring, if you’re using any. I used 2 small glass containers, one flipped on top of the other so that not much moisture could escape.
- With the bowl covered, heat for 2 minutes and mix with a spoon.
- Heat again in 30 seconds stages, checking and mixing between each. If you’re using coloring, it will be easier to distinguish if there are uncooked areas. It should take anywhere between 2.5 and 4 minutes, depending on the microwave. Mine cooked it fast. If it’s a thick sticky mass that holds together, it’s done.
- Dust the work surface and utensils with starch and dump the mochi while hot.
- Cut the mochi in equal parts depending on your filling size and close it around it. For balls 1 tbsp in size, I divided the mochi in 16 pieces.
- Flatten the mochi with starch covered hands, place the beans and pinch it shut. Have more starch on hand. Starched silicone mats work well as a work surface.
*Plain mochi taste just as good, but you might like to add a bit more sugar.
*I don’t recommend doubling up the recipe for the mochi. It’s better to cook one batch at a time.
*You can make coconut butter by blending coconut flakes.
