Ichigo Daifuku (kind of)

So unbeknownst to my readership I have been experimenting behind closed doors. Not so long ago I was introduced to mochi. Actually the first type of mochi I tried was an ice cream daifuku, a little ball of ice cream covered in a skin of mochi. Mochi, in case you are unfamiliar, is glutinous rice cake made (traditionally) by pounding glutinous rice into a thick sticky dough. It can be flavored with all sorts of things, it can be baked, it can be filled. It is simply lovely. Well, it turns out one can make mochi at home easily enough by substituting the pounded glutinous rice with cooked, reconstituted glutinous rice flour. It may not have the same glorious light yet chewy and smooth texture of traditionally made mochi, but it also it tremendously less labor intesive. When I have a trio of strong men to pound my rice for me perhaps I shall try it that way.

Anyhow! I have been experimenting with making different mochi treats. I say "kind of" in the post title because I am actually cheating. I could not find glutinous rice flour so for the time being, until I can get to the closest Asian market, I am stuck with plain regular rice flour. No, it doesn't have the same texture, no it does not make treats quite as wonderful, but it seems to handle relatively the same, and if you do it right they still come out quite enjoyable.

So long story short I tried out making some ichigo daifuku which are mochi skins filled with whole fresh strawberries which have been surrounded in adzuki bean paste. I made some fresh bean paste just for the occasion and they came out pretty darn tasty. Wrapping the starberries in the bean paste and then covering them proved a bit tricky though, even with cold beans, so I also tried a couple with the strawberries hollowed out and the bean paste hidden inside.

As a side note, I have complained before about making bean paste and about how long it takes to cook the beans, well, this time I soaked them overnight and it cut my cooking time by what seemed like 90%! Splendid. Now the only time consuming, laborious part is straining out the skins :-P

<---Here is another picture of when I got tired of dealing with strawberries and made one just filled with bean paste. My skins are probably too fat, but for the time being I will blame it on not having the right ingredients.