Making Mochi

The other day I decided that I would make mochi again. Instead of dealing with all the sticky mess, I will steam them this time. It is a lot easier and there's more at the end :-)

Making the red bean paste:
1. soak the red beans overnight (you don't need to use the whole bag, 1/3 should be sufficient. Small red beans tend to work better than the big ones)
2. boil the red beans for around two hours until they are soft. You could add the desired amount of sugar at this point.
3. crush the beans (using a food processor works too). Make sure that there's not too much water. It will just make the next step a little longer.
4. put some oil in a pan. put in the bean paste so far. with the fire turned to medium, stir the bean paste once in a while until most, but not all, of the liquid is gone. Preferably, they should not crumble when you touch it.

Making the skin:
1. boil 1.5 cups of water. mix in desired amount of sugar (recipes generally call for 1/2 cup but it's too much sugar for me) until dissolved.
2. add in 1/2 cup of wheat starch (this is suppose to keep the mochi soft when refrigerated but I haven't gotten it to work for me yet...).
3. Add in 1.5 cups of glutinous rice flour. Add more water or rice flour until the dough is mouldable.

Putting it together:
1. Take a piece of dough the size of a ping pong ball.
2. Either flatten the dough or make a hole in the middle (but make sure that the skin isn't very thick. Put some red bean paste in the middle and cover it.
3. put the finished piece in an oiled plate ready for steaming.

Cooking it:
1. put the plate in the steamer and cook for 10 minutes.
2. When done, put in corn starch or coconut or anything else in which you want to cover the mochi with. Failure to do do will cause the mochi to stick to each other.

Enjoy :-)