There’s nothing lovelier than a deep shade of purple. But what makes this ice cream so colorful? YAM of course. What.

I thought a nice color – as well as textural – contrast would be to pair it with a cupcake – not just any cupcake, a mochi cupcake!

ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 cup flour
3/4 cup mochiko
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk

Ube ice cream

Ube is the Filipino word for yam and you can make some amazingly colorful sweets with it. Don’t be scared – it’s really tasty, honest. At certain asian markets you can find Ube Ice Cream pre-made in the freezer section.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

In a medium bowl whisk the flour, mochiko, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs until light and fluffy, then add the vanilla. Alternate the flour mixture with the milk, until combined.

Pour into prepped liners. Bake for 15-17 minutes depending on your oven, testing with a toothpick. Let cool on a wire rack.

Keep the cupcakes in an airtight container or in the freezer (individually wrapped) until you are ready to use them. Then take a scoop of Ube Ice Cream and sit it right on top. A pretty little presentation – great for a hot summer day.

As you know, I cook with mochiko…A LOT. I wanted to make something for a party, and brownies are always a good choice. Adding mochiko gave this an extra little ‘chew’ and a little heft. They were a hit!

ingredients:
1 cup mochiko (sweet rice flour)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
4 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 egg
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Mochiko is a sweet rice flour that gives things that familiar ‘mochi-ness’ – it comes in a 12 ounce box and it pretty cheap.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8×8 pan with parchment and butter it. This will make your life way easier when you go to take these out. (Note: I made this in a larger pan, ’cause I made a double batch since I was going to a party.)

In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and chocolate chips and stir to combine. Set aside and let cool for a bit.

In a bowl whisk together the mochiko, sugar, baking soda and salt.

Add the melted chocolate mixture, evaporated milk, vanilla and the egg. Mix until combined.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the batter, then bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the center is done, it’s hard to tell since the mochi does give these a little more ’spring’ than the average brownie, but you can kind of tell when it’s cooked through.

Let cool in the pan for about 10-15 minutes, then using the overlapping parchment, pull the brownies out of the pan and let cool on a wire rack. Cut the brownies into squares and you are good to go!

These are so good little people may try to steal them…

Mochi. And donuts. If there are two more wonderful things in the world, you let me know. I thought I’d combine the two to get a nice sweet donut with a little chew. These are similar to ‘dango’ which is a fried dough that is sold at church carnivals – but those are plain. I wanted to add more sweetness and FLAVA and you can’t go wrong with cinnamon and sugar.

ingredients:
2 cups mochiko (sweet rice flour)
2 cups flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1-1/2 cups whole milk
4 Tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoon vanilla

oil (you need to DEEP fry these, so they are immersed)

1/2 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons cinnamon

In a large bowl mix together the mochiko, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla. Set aside.

In a separate shallow dish, stir together the sugar and cinnamon. Set this aside for later, and start to heat your oil.

You know I HATE frying, but someone gifted me a fryer years ago and man, I think it’s the best thing ever. It does all the work and no mess. Heaven. If you don’t have one, just heat some oil in deep skillet, that’ll work too. The optimum oil temp for these is around 350 degrees.

Now you’re going to drop these by the Tablespoon into the hot oil. They expand a lot so don’t go crazy overflowing the spoon. Also the mochiko makes the batter very pull-y and sticky, so try your best to keep it formed into nice round shapes or you will get some craziness at the end of it all.

Once the dough pops up and floats, you know you are in good shape. Fry until golden brown, a few minutes on each side. Drain them on a wire rack. If you drain them on paper towels alllll the oil will get sucked back into the donut. GROSS. Trust me and use a rack.

While still hot, roll the donuts in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

These things are BEST warm, but people who ate them hours later said they were still great. There’s nothing more comforting than sugary donuts. YUM!!

Since I spent New Year’s making over 250 pounds of mochi, I haven’t had a chance (or need) to make any at home. So this bag of sweet mochi rice has just been sitting here. Staring at me. I thought a good use of it would be to make a meatball, kind of like the ones called ‘porcupines’, just think of these as Japanese PORKupines. HAW! Ok, not that funny.

ingredients:
1 cup mochi rice (soaked for 2 hours)

1 pound ground pork
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon mirin (Sweet Rice Wine“>sweet rice wine)
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
pinch of salt
dash of pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
2 green onions, chopped

Put the mochi rice in a bowl of water and let sit for 2 hours. This will soften it up and get it ready for steaming. When you start to make the meatballs, drain the rice well, and set aside.

Combine the pork and all the other ingredients in a bowl and mix together until incorporated. Form little meatballs, say 1″ balls or so, then roll them in the drained mochi rice.

Place them in a steamer and steam for approx 20-25 minutes.

The mochi rice makes these a little sticky, but very tasty!

New Years Day is coming – I’m resting up for two full days of cooking. A big part of my Japanese New Years party is mochi. Mochi is a traditional Japanese rice cake – it can be sweet – but on New Year’s it’s plain, eaten with kinako or soy sauce+sugar.

In the old days my family used to pound mochi by hand with mallets. THAT’s old skool. Me? I use the new electric plugged in machine with very minimal work on my part because I live in the future.

I recently went to thefoodlibrarian’s house where they used old school machines to make their mochi. They’ve been doing it for 40 years and they’ve got the process down – steaming the rice, extruding the mochi, cooling the mochi, forming the mochi, letting it sit in a bed of mochiko flour, and then finally packaging it. We made over 250 pounds of mochi. Unbelievable.

It was a lot of work but so worth it. There’s nothing as good as fresh mochi!

Mochiko is a Japanese rice flour – it’s amazing the things you can do with mochiko. Mochiko Chicken, An mochi, this here is a take on custard mochi, but with an added kick – blueberries! It’s crunchy, chewy and oh so delicious.

ingredients:
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
1 cup butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
12 oz blueberries (either fresh or frozen both work)

Stir sugar in the melted butter. Add milk and mix well. Add eggs and mix. Stir in baking powder, mochiko and vanilla. If you don’t know what mochiko is – you definitely need it in your pantry. It’s a white rice flour and it’s very fine.

If you know my other recipes you know that I never flour the pan, I only brush it with melted butter. But hey, do what you want.

After the batter is mixed, I folded in my thawed blueberries. THEN poured it into my greased pan. The blueberries will tint the batter a little, don’t mix too much or it will look gray. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until the toothpick tests clean.

Isn’t it a lovely golden brown? Just let it cool and then cut it into squares to serve. It’s a nice mochy chewy consistency with a cake-like feel built right in. Great with coffee and tea.

Part of Fried Chicken: Three Ways
This is sort of like a Japanese sweet fried chicken. Without all the dredging. Every recipe is kinda standard, but it’s the way you cut the chicken that counts. SIZE MATTERS.

ingredients:
2 lbs chicken, cut up into small pieces
1/4 cup mochiko
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
5 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon minced garlic
black pepper

Mochiko – what this dish is named after is a wonderous thing with lots of yummy uses. I always keep a box in my pantry.

Now, I like to cut the chicken into tiny bite size pieces. Believe it or not, it tastes better when cooked this way. Other people just fry the whole thigh, or chicken wings, but I’m telling you, this is the best way! Trust me on this.

Mix all the ingredients together. Add the chicken pieces to the mixture. Keep in the fridge for about 5 hours. That should make the chicken nice and marinated.

When you’re ready to cook, heat oil in a pan to fry the chicken pieces. Grab a bunch and drop it into the oil and just stir it around, they will separate on their own.

As Alton Brown told me (not personally) the best way to drain fried foods is on a wire rack with paper towels underneath. This will get rid of all the excess oil. You don’t wanna be eating that. I make this for dinner, but it makes a great party food and like I said, you can use chicken wings cause that would be a-ok for parties.

So I saw this Martha Stewart recipe for ‘strawberry bread‘ – but the recipe needed that little, somethin’ somethin’…which is mochi, of course. So I adjusted the recipe…a lot. So much so that it doesn’t seem like ‘bread’ to me, it’s more like a loaf cake which OF COURSE, I turned into cupcakes. Yes – the Hello Kitty liners make them taste better…

ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 pint strawberries (rinsed, hulled, quartered)
1 cup flour
3/4 cup mochiko
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

If you don’t know what mochiko is, it’s a rice flour that give a nice flavor and chew – especially to baked goods. You can find it in an asian supermarket.

In a small saucepan, bring the strawberries to a boil over medium heat – just about 2 minutes – you want them to look like this:

Set the strawberries aside.

In a medium bowl whisk the flour, mochiko, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs until light and fluffy. Alternate the flour mixture with the milk, adding the vanilla in at the end. Fold in the strawberries.

Pour into prepped liners. This recipe will fill 12 cupcake cups. Bake for 20 minutes depending on your oven, testing with a toothpick. Let cool on a wire rack. These are great plain, with a little powdered sugar on top, but also fantastic with a vanilla buttercream frosting.

‘Moffles’ are mochi thrown into a waffle maker, thus calling themselves…moffles. While that’s all well and good, I wanted to make an actual WAFFLE. So I made up some waffle batter but changed the ingredients to add mochiko. What I got was a crispy waffle with a mochi chew, not too far off the weirdness path and perfect for brunch. (It tastes better in a Hello Kitty waffle maker, for sure)

ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup mochiko
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 cups milk
2 eggs

Prep your waffle iron by buttering it up. The mochiko makes this batter pretty sticky, so you want to make sure you can get them out.

Combine all the dry ingredients, then add the wet. Mixing until just combined.

Pour into your waffle maker, and wait til they come out a nice crispy brown.

You’ll notice the familiar mochi chew. Great with fruit and syrup – something different for your morning breakfast.

Mochi is fantastic stuff, it can be savory or sweet. When made into desserts it has a nice familiar ‘chew’ that let’s you know mochi is a key ingredient. These are dense little cupcakes with just a little sweetness.

ingredients:
1 (1 lb) box mochiko
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1-1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 (16 oz can) an – sweetened red bean (optional)

Mochiko can be found in most japanese markets, it’s a white flour, in a one pound box. Really useful to keep in your pantry, you can use it for a lot of other recipes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners. I get about 18 cupcakes out of this recipe.

Mix all the ingredients together, EXCEPT the an, in a bowl.

IF you are using the an, only fill the cups about 1/2 full, add a teaspoon of an, then cover with more batter. If you don’t want the an, just fill the cups 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven, until you get nice little slightly browned tops. Let cool on a wire rack. Now these are best, just like this, dusted with a bit of powdered sugar. However, I was making these for New Year’s Day and added a little something extra.

I made some kagami mochis out of fondant, iced the cupcakes with a lemon frosting and stuck my little fondant creations on top. They were festive for the party and were a fun nod to the tradition of New Year’s Day mochi.