Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi

It was the same day I baked the Okashi's Black Sesame Chiffon Cake, I made Okashi's Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi. Okashi seemed to have conquer my Sunday. Before I decided to make the Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi, I recalled I have seen it somewhere before. Then I realised it was at Shirley's blog.

When I read the recipe, I thought it looked pretty easy. Being ambitious, I wanted to make 5x of the recipe, so that I can give away as a birthday present to my sister-in-law. However, I was wrong. It was truly not easy to do the moulding and rolling! In the end, I only managed out 3x of the recipe, making only 13 pieces in total! Here's sharing my experience on the making this "looks-easy-but-hard-to-perfect" mochi!

Original recipe for Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi, extracted from "Okashi" by Keiko Ishida

(Makes 4)

Ingredients:

160g Red Bean paste

70g Glutinous rice flour

110g Water
Potato starch for coating

4 Strawberries, small, washed and hulled

Method:

1. Combine glutinous rice flour and water in a bowl. Mix well. Microwave at 600W for 1 min. Stir the mixture again. Microwave again for 1 min.
2. Divide dough into 4 portions. Coat dough with potato starch, then flatten using hands.
3. Weigh out 40g of red bean and wrap a strawberry with it completely.
4. Place each filling ball in the middle of each piece of dough. Cover the filling and gently using your fingers, stretch the dough over to cover the fillings.
5. Coat rice ball with potato starch and serve immediately.

Notes and tips:

1. You can make more than one recipe. However, stick to one recipe of the glutinous rice when you heat up. Meaning, if you make 2 recipes, weigh out two times and heat up separately. So that it remained warm when you roll it up.

2. On the other hand, the glutinuous rice dough is not easy to roll up when it's too hot. Dust with too much potato flour, it won't expand and stick. Too little, you'll have it stick to your fingers and hands easily. Go 'light" with potato flour. Feel the dough yourself to decide how much flour to add.

3. With one recipe of the rice dough, the recipe stated to divide into 4 portions. However, I found that the portions were too thick. I felt that 5-6 portions should be just right to cover the fillings.

4. I used ready made red bean paste. The recipe called for 40g, however, I used about 23g as I didn't want the mochi to "grow" too huge. Then, I realised that my dough was too thick and the fillings were not sufficient, resulting in the mochi being bland. So it might be good to use at least 30g of red bean paste.

5. It'll be better to use really small strawberries though. The strawberries I used were relatively small, however after wrapping, the mochi became very huge! It's almost like 3/4 of my fist! You defintely cannot put the whole mochi into the mouth!

6. The mochi is best consumed immediately, or at most, keep it in the fridge and consumed the following day. Otherwise, the washed strawberry will produce water and make the paste watery.

I'm submitting this to the Aspiring Bakers #5 Fruity March hosted by Bakericious.