How to eat mochi
Every year people in Japan DIE from choking on mochi because it’s so sticky. Yep -that’s the way to go, eating something I love. Regardless of the death factor, mochi is traditional good luck food, it seems simple, but if you’ve never had it before here are a few different ways to eat it…
Ozoni:
After the giant mochi making fest – the most traditional way is to eat it in Ozoni aka ‘good luck’ soup for Oshogatsu on the morning of January 1st. Everyone makes theirs differently, mine is full o’ color:
Toasted:
Let’s go old skool here. In January I serve this to the kids for breakfast. Mochi toasted in an oven so it gets nice and warm and crisp, then served with soy sauce and sugar. (Really, it’s a teriyaki sauce base if you think about it.)
Or…and this is how family eat it in Hawaii: I pan fry the mochi in a tiny bit of butter, then serve it with a mixture of kinako and sugar.
An Mochi:
My fave – sweet filled mochi. These are filled with an aka azuki bean (sweetened red bean paste) or white lima bean paste. I’ve even seen more modern versions filled with peanut butter for the kiddies. Me – I only eat the pink ones.
You can buy it in the stores or make your own. (recipe, here)
Mochiko:
Sweet Rice Flour
Mochi balls:
This is how most people are familiar with mochi, as a topping in the ever popular frozen yogurt craze. Personally, I prefer mine Hawaiian-style on Root Beer shave ice w/ice cream and mochi balls. YUM.
Mochi Ice Cream:
Another familiar form of mochi, Mochi Ice Cream served and priced high at a lot of Japanese restaurants. But *I* can tell you where you can get mochi filled with GELATO. Shh. It’s like crack – I’m your pusherman.
As you can tell, I know my mochi. I plan on eating a lot more of it in the coming new year too!
Eggnog Cupcakes
Eggnog’s not really my thang, but when I watched my friends wash down an entire quart in minutes I realized I MUST develop an eggnog cupcake. They are dense with ‘nog flavor – just like eggnog!
ingredients:
1-1/2 sticks (3/4 cups) butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2-1/4 cups cake flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup eggnog
mascarpone frosting (recipe here)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep a cupcake pan with liners.
In a medium bowl whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until combined. Then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla.
Alternate the flour mixture with the eggnog until everything is combined into a silky batter.
Pour the batter into the prepped liners and bake for 14-16 minutes depending on your oven. Test with a toothpick and let cool on a wire rack.
Because of the flavor-full-ness of the eggnog, I like to pair this with my mascarpone frosting (recipe here). It’s light and airy, the perfect combination with the eggnog. You can even spike these with a little rum for a New Year’s party.
Sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon and you’ve got the most festive holiday dessert ever!
‘Mochi Factory’ – gingerbread house
My mom and I made gingerbread houses all the time when I was a kid. She got books from the library (no wonder she’s a librarian) to teach herself how to do it. I took to it rather quickly and immediately started making plans and designing my own houses – probably a big influence on me becoming an architect. My mom has long since abandoned the process, and of course now – I CAN’T STOP. I feel the need to carry on the tradition by myself.
They are big, elaborate, and always always require plans and elevations. This year I decided to make a Mochi Factory in honor of The Food Librarian’s and my love of mochi. We just made 150 pounds of it for goodness sake.
Someday she and I are going to quit our (her) jobs and open our own mochi store. Someday. You all will be our customers, right? Because our store will be just like this and be totally edible.
1. Design
To start this mochi factory I worked on tons of design sketches. This is just one of many that I did, where I’m trying to figure out dimensions:
2. Plans
I work my design around shapes sizes, proportion to candy – etc. Much like actual construction, there comes a time when you have to move from rough design to working drawings. So when I finally got a design that seemed doable, I printed out the plans/pieces to scale:
3. Model
Then I built a paper model. Yes, I know. It’s stupidly extreme, but I get a good sense of what will work and what won’t. I found a few flaws in my design that I ended up having to change.
4. Baking
Then I mixed up the gingerbread dough, and using the paper model (broken apart) as a template, I cut out the walls. I’m not sure why those Star Wars action figures are looking on over by the orange bowl…
Once the walls are cut out they are baked then left to cool on a wire rack. I leave them to dry overnight. You heard me. I like to make sure these walls are rock solid.
5. Construction
Ok, are you interested in construction? Here’s how it works. First I make up a batch of fairly stiff royal icing, and place it in a piping bag. If you don’t have an extra pair of hands, which I never do – use a glass to help you stand up the first wall, and ‘glue’ it into place.
Here’s the trick, use candy sticks or candy canes to hold up the interiors of your walls. Just like in real construction, the added weight of the facade i.e. candy will be hefty and you don’t want these suckers to fall down:
Complete the construction of all the walls and the roof. Now since this is an atypical gingerbread ‘house’, there is no slanted roof to help support itself. The flatness of the roof is a PAIN and required a lot of candy stick trickery, etc. Remember that kids, flat roofs are lame.
At the last second I decided to make the conveyor belt continue up the side of the house. I thought it would make the house more ‘factory-like’ and not so boxy. I tried out my idea of using little half cut mini marshmallows as ‘mochi’…
Now that the shell is assembled…I let it dry overnight. YES AGAIN. Stick with me folks, I promise it’s worth it….
6. Decoration
I’m going to be honest with you. I usually use about TWICE as much candy, but this year my budget is, well, non-existent and I had to make do. My goal is always to make sure that NO gingerbread is showing. I like to cover these things entirely in candy AND make the whole thing edible no matter what. It’s a tough feat, believe it or not.
I decided to go with a simple facade that wrapped around the building. ‘Simple’ is relative in terms of candy. I always frame all the openings, windows and doors, to give it a more finished look, candy sticks and licorice are always good for this job.
For the tall roof I laid out chocolate licorice, and the shorter roof was made of grape nerds. The factory smoke stacks didn’t turn out as planned, but let’s give me a break by saying that it was storming while I was building this thing and the weather was REALLY uncooperative. There was actually cotton candy ‘smoke’ that was also supposed to come out of those smokestacks. Amd what’s a mochi factory without a goldfish pond, right?
Right at the end I added a ‘banner’ made out of a fruit roll up and I hand piped the words “MOCHI FACTORY”.
All in all I was pretty pleased with the outcome of this factory. There are things I definitely would have done differently, but I really liked the conveyor belt concept the best. I’ll have to incorporate that into something else…maybe next year’s? What am I thinking. Yikes.
**for WAY better pictures, go to the Food Librarian’s website, HERE.
Mochi making 2010
Like an Olympic athlete I’m saving my energy for the big game – New Year’s Day Oshogatsu. Last year’s event was epic and I need to at least make it up to par again.
A key component in my party is fresh mochi, so off we went to Food Librarian’s house for their annual mochi making event. 50 years of tradition don’t lie – these people know their stuff.
It starts the night before with the soaking of the mochi rice. Normal people do this about 2 cups at a time – this right here is 150 pounds of rice being prepped…
Then it goes to the steamers!
Next, into the extruders, where rice goes in and mochi comes out…
…and is grabbed by ‘The Catchers’. If you are asked to be a mochi ‘catcher’ you must have nerves of steel (or no feeling in your fingers) to perform this task.
The Catchers hands are sprayed with Pam because the fresh mochi is SO sticky, the Pam helps when then they form the burning hot mochi (no joke) into nice rounded shapes.
Then the mochi goes to the racks to cool down.
Then it’s off to the flour rooms. Here mochi goes to cool some more and then be covered in Mochiko (Sweet Rice Flour)
This is ‘my’ fave task because I get to play in the flour like it’s snowing. The only white Christmas I’ll get in soCal is a mochiko one!
Then the little mochis go off to the packing room. Here the older generation sort and pack all 150 pounds of mochi into various containers for church, family and friends. This is where the love is.
Now I can enjoy the fruits of – er, everyone else’s labor – and eat! FRESH mochi with soy sauce and sugar the old skool way. There is nothing better in the whole world. And now to get ready for…New Year’s Day!
For different ways to eat mochi, go HERE.
Vote for this post in the PAM Top Tips contest, here!
Merry Christmas!
12 days of cookies – Day 12: Burger Bite Cookies
Finally! We’ve reached the 12th day of cookies!! Celebrate by…er, making your family every single one of them. D’oh. Sorry. Not much of a payoff.
This is my favorite cookie because it’s so easy to make. Little sweet burgers, made with nilla wafer buns and peppermint pattie, well – patties! These always bring a smile to everyone’s face!
Thanks for following along with the 12 days of cookies – happy holidays!
Burger Bite Cookies recipe, here.
12 days of cookies – Day 11: Mini Black and White Cookies
Are you still awake? Are you bored of all my cookies yet? Don’t worry you’re in the home stretch.
Without a doubt – these are my favorite cookie of all time. Usually they are gigantic, but of course, I made them mini. I would SO benefit from a miniaturization machine.
More like a cake than a cookie, I adddoore these things.
Mini Black and White Cookies recipe, here.
12 days of cookies – Day 10: Carrot Cake Cookies
Attention lovers of carrot cake – this one’s for you. Everyone I make these for seems to love them! I also like to make them mini – which of course, makes EVERYTHING so much better…
Carrot Cake Cookies recipe, here.
12 days of cookies – Day 9: Dyed Cookies
Don’t blame me when your kids start wearing tye dye shirts and seeing double rainbows. The kids just LOVE the colors and these cookies are a fun project AND delicious.
Dyed Cookie Dough Cookies recipe, here.
12 days of cookies – Day 8: Potato Chip Cookies
This one is for O.G. who loves her some potato chips. Since chips are her main food group, it’s hard to believe that she will be turning NINETY in a matter of weeks.
These are light and crispy and will probably give you a heart attack – especially if you dip them in chocolate, which I highly suggest.
