Mochi

It's another Vitamix recipe! I'm in the final days of pregnancy, and craving sweets. It's fierce, I tell you! Luckily for me, we try not to keep too much prepared food around the house. It's better for us, but stinks when I go out of town and come back to...nothing, until I cook it. It's much easier to convince myself to NOT make that batch of cookies, than to tell myself to leave them in the cupboard. (Will you look at those hands? I've had the hands of an old women since I was 10. No joke. Oddly enough, they haven't GROWN since I was 12, either!)

The craving became too fierce the other day, and I wondered if it would be possible to make my own rice flour at home and create a passable mochi. For those who didn't grow up in a dense and vibrant Asian community, mochi is a rather traditional kind of Asian sweet- sweet sticky rice, mixed with a little water and sugar and pounded into a gummy dough. The dough can be rolled into balls and coated with various powders, or wrapped around fillings. My mom's favorite is mochi dough wrapped around mango ice cream. It seems that each country treats their mochi a little differently.

I started by grinding 2 cups of regular sticky rice in the Vitamix. All the recipes call for "Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour" (or glutinous rice flour.) I think Mochiko is the brand...but I was willing to give my rice flour a shot! The vitamix isn't the machine for making powder-fine flour- it left little bits and bobs behind.

The first recipe I tried is here. It was kind of a disaster- way too sticky to handle, and the larger bits of rice flour sunk to the bottom making a kind of crust. The top was yummy and smooth, though. It might have worked better with a finer flour.

My second recipe can be found here. It used about half the amount of water, so the dough was fairly pasty before being put in the microwave, rather than a liquid. I think this recipe is the keeper! I've included it below, with my changes. Basically, I've doubled the recipe, increased the sugar a tad, and changed the handling instructions slightly.

Mochi

Ingredients:
14 Tablespoons Rice Flour (1 cup less 2 Tbsp)
3 Tbsp sugar
10 Tbsp boiling water

1. In a glass dish (I used a 4 cup pyrex cup), mix rice flour and sugar.
   
2. Heat 11 Tbsp water in a pyrex cup in the microwave, and add 10 Tbsp boiling water to flour-sugar mixture. Stir two minutes.
   
3. Cover with saran wrap and microwave 2-4 minutes. I cooked mine 3.
4. Pour a small amount of oil into a large Ziploc bag, and coat inside thoroughly. Scoop hot dough into bag and start kneading. You might need to cover the bag with a towel, this is hot! Use the heel of your hand to push the dough out, then grab a bag corner and shake back into a ball. Eventually, dough will form a solid (and cool) enough lump where you can just mash it in your hands like play clay. Knead for 7-10 minutes, until kind of springy and chewy.
   
5. Grab off teaspoon-sized chunks and roll into balls. You can put filling inside (red bean paste, guava jelly, etc. were all suggested), and you can roll these in powdered peanutes, more rice flour, toasted sesame flour, etc. I left mine plain.

Here is my dough ball. It's only out of respect for YOU that this wasn't consumed as-is! It's much prettier rolled into balls, don't you think?