For the Kid’s homework he was asked to make a ‘favorite recipe.’ The Kid loves to cook and the choice was easy: my neapolitan mochi cake. He followed the entire recipe himself (a little helping holding the bowl, etc) and in the end he got to eat his creation!

ingredients:
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
2 Tablespoons Valrhona Cocoa Powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
pink gel food coloring

Mochiko is a sweet rice flour. It’s very fine, almost dusty. You can find it in most asian markets or online. It gives a familiar ‘chew’ to baked goods, reminiscent of mochi itself.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep a bundt pan by greasing it with butter. Personally I never flour it, but that’s all on you.

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

Stir together the melted butter and sugar. Then add the evaporated milk. Add the vanilla and the eggs and mix well. Now add it to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Divide the batter into three bowls, leaving one bowl as is.

In the second bowl add the Valrhona cocoa powder and the chocolate chips. Stir well.

In the third bowl add a touch of pink gel food coloring just until you get a nice pink. Set aside.

In the prepped bundt pan, pour in the chocolate batter.

Top that with the vanilla (plain) and then finish it off with the pink.

Place the filled pan on a baking sheet and bake for 45-50 minutes depending on your oven. Check to see if it’s done by piercing it with a large skewer.

Let the cake cool in the pan, then turn the pan over onto a wire rack and the cake will pop right out.

Slicing into the unassuming cake and seeing all the pretty colors is what makes this cake so fun! The Kid loves the mochi texture and he likes to eat each color one at a time. This Kid is methodical.

This cake is a delicious and fun family treat!

Out of the 190 pounds of mochi that was made I took home a good 5 pounds of it. Most is for me to use on New Year’s Day but the rest…well, it’s to be eaten of course! Last year I did a rundown of different ways to eat mochi (here) and this year I had to get more creative. 5 pounds is a lot to go through.

By sandwiching pulled pork between the mochi and toasting it, you get a nice savory snack!

ingredients:
2 mochi
2 Tablespoons pulled pork (recipe here)

Take one mochi and place the pulled pork in the center. Take the other mochi and press it on top, pinching the sides together to seal.

Place on non-stick foil and put in the toaster for 10-15 minutes until the mochi starts to puff up and slightly brown.

Serve nice and toasty!

Let’s see, the difference between this year’s Mochi Making Day and 2009 and 2010 is that this year there was over 190 pounds of mochi!

The annual trip to the Food Librarian‘s family mochi making event did not disappoint. There was lots of mochi, fun and family.

After 56 years of doing this family event, the assembly line was rollin’.

This year there was more than enough help so I did the next best thing…sat around and ate for four hours. With a spread like this – wouldn’t you do that same?

That’s just ONE table of food.
Here’s the second buffet table:

And the salad table:

AND don’t forget the dessert buffet table:

It takes a lot of food to feed a crew of family members making 190 pounds of mochi. Typical of Japanese-American parties there was sushi, enchiladas and tamales. That’s how we roll – Mexican food is a Japanese-American tradition, don’t you know.

Now I have a box of fresh mochi for my Oshogatsu Ozoni – Japanese New Year’s soup. I’m off to prepare for my own personal cooking marathon – New Year’s Day. Wish me luck.

Mochiko is one of my favorite ingredients. Savory or sweet, it’s so versatile. This is a take on old skool Hawaiian custard mochi but in cake form filled with beautiful fresh blueberries! A lovely cake with that special mochi ‘chew’.

ingredients:
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1-1/2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9×13 pan with melted butter. Set aside.

Mochikois a sweet rice flour that you can find in Japanese markets or even online. It adds a chewiness to both desserts and savory dishes.

Stir together the sugar and the melted butter. Add the evaporated milk and mix well. Then add the eggs one at a time, along with the vanilla.

Carefully stir in the mochiko, baking powder and salt.

After the batter is mixed, fold in the blueberries. If you are using frozen, move quickly – the batter will start to color or ‘gray’.

Pour the mixture into the prepped pan and bake for 1 hour.

Let the cake cool in the pan and then cut it into squares to serve.

This dessert is a lovely blueberry cake with an added surprise of a mochi chewy consistency. It’s perfect with afternoon coffee and tea!

I am the self-proclaimed Queen of Mochi (can I get a what what??) and I tend to go overboard with desserts for New Year’s but I think I topped myself with this. There’s nothing better to me than fresh mochi and when you fill that with classic peanut butter and jelly? That’s love right there.

ingredients:
3-1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp food coloring
1 box mochiko
peanut butter
jelly
potato starch

peanut butter
jelly

Prep a cutting board by sprinkling liberally with potato starch. This needs to be totally ready to go since you will be running over to it with boiling hot mochi. Set aside.

*this image by the Food Librarian

In a large pot, boil the water and the sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the food coloring and stir.

Now the work – add the box of mochiko to the tinted sugar water and stir like crazy!! HURRY – if you don’t work fast it won’t come together and you’ll get the dreaded lumps.

Now quick, dump it on your prepped cutting board and sprinkle with potato starch so it doesn’t dry out. DO IT! If this recipe sounds hectic, it is. It’s a heck of a lot of work, all based on timing.

Pull off a piece of mochi, round it out in your hand and flatten it. Fill with about 3/4 teaspoon of peanut butter, and just as much jelly.

Pinch the edges closed and flatten it into a little mochi shape.

One bite and you get a little pocket of pb & j plus some nice chewy mochi, the perfect comforting snack to show your family and friends that you care. Aw.

For the New Year’s Day party I always make An (sweet red bean) mochi, this time just for fun, I played around with a bunch of different fillings, one of which should be a given to fill ANYTHING…Nutella.

Mochi + Chocolatey spread = happiness.

ingredients:
3-1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
¼ tsp food coloring (I prefer pink)
1 box mochiko
nutella
potato starch
Nutella

Prep a cutting board by sprinkling liberally with potato starch. This needs to be totally ready to go since you will be running over to it with boiling hot mochi. Set aside.

*this image by the Food Librarian

In a large pot, boil the water and the sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the food coloring and stir. I used purple, so that I could tell the the ones with the Nutella apart from all the other mochis. Like a mochi Scarlet Letter.

Now the work – add the box of mochiko to the tinted sugar water and stir like crazy!! HURRY – if you don’t work fast it won’t come together and you’ll get the dreaded lumps.

Now quick, dump it on your prepped cutting board and sprinkle with potato starch so it doesn’t dry out. DO IT! If this recipe sounds hectic, it is. It’s a heck of a lot of work, all based on timing.

Now pull off a piece of mochi, kind of round it out in your hand and flatten it. Fill with about 3/4 teaspoon of Nutella. Pinch the edges closed and flatten a bit into a little mochi shape.

They are sweet, don’t get me wrong. So you might want to keep them on the small size so as not to put people into sugar comas.

If you eat these freshly made, the mochi is hot and warms up the Nutella and, oh lordy. Heaven.

I came up with this recipe for Vanilla Mochi Donuts to enter the Spice Islands Vanilla Challenge and I was one of the three finalists!

Wanting to bring out the best of the ingredients, I used not only vanilla extract but vanilla sugar. Is there anything more satisfying than a piece of fried dough covered in sugar? I think not. Add mochiko AND vanilla into the mix and you’ve got the perfect combination!

ingredients:
2 cups mochiko (sweet rice flour)
2 cups flour
1-1/2 cups vanilla sugar**
3 eggs
1-1/2 cups whole milk
4 Tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons Spice Islands Vanilla Extract

oil (for frying)

1/2 cup vanilla sugar**

The only thing you will have to make ahead is the vanilla sugar. Scrape and bury a vanilla bean into two cups of sugar. Keep in an airtight container until you are ready to use.

In a large bowl mix together the mochiko, flour, vanilla sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder and vanilla. Set aside. (Mochiko is a Japanese rice flour that can be found in asian sections of the market or online. Mochiko gives a nice ‘chew’ perfect for these donuts.)

Heat the oil in a large skillet or a home fryer.

Drop by the Tablespoon into the hot oil. They will expand a lot. Also the mochiko makes the batter very pull-y and sticky, so try your best to keep it formed into nice round shapes.

Once the dough pops up and floats, fry until golden brown, a few minutes on each side. Drain them on a wire rack.

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

My prize? A YEAR’S supply of vanilla! That’s a lot of vanilla.

For more info about the contest and the other winners, here.

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, I use this in a lot of baking. Sure you can make some amazing Hello Kitty Moffles (mochi-waffles), Chocolate mochi brownies even – or you can also make some deeeelish Hawaiian Mochiko Chicken with it. Love it.

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!

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) so that it won’t dry out.

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!

She even gave away my “I like big bundts” pins if you participated by making a bundt today! So in honor of National Bundt Day I wanted to do something visually spectacular. I love brown, white and pink – I make so many neapolitan things it’s crazy. Cookies, Ice cream musubi, cupcakes, Inside out ice cream sandwiches – I love those colors and it’s about time I make a bundt. That plus mochi? Well, you’ve got yourself a mighty fine dessert to celebrate National Bundt Day.

ingredients:
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
2 Tablespoons Valrhona Cocoa Powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
pink gel food coloring

Mochiko is a sweet rice flour. It’s very fine, almost dusty. You can find it in most asian markets or online. It gives a familiar ‘chew’ to baked goods, reminiscent of mochi itself.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep a bundt pan by greasing it with butter. Personally I never flour it, but that’s all on you.

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

Stir together the melted butter and sugar. Then add the evaporated milk. Add the vanilla and the eggs and mix well. Now add it to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Divide the batter into three bowls, leaving one bowl as is.

In the second bowl add the Valrhona cocoa powder and the chocolate chips. Stir well.

In the third bowl add a touch of pink gel food coloring just until you get a nice pink. Set aside.

In the prepped bundt pan, pour in the chocolate batter.

Top that with the vanilla (plain) and then finish it off with the pink.

Place the filled pan on a baking sheet and bake for 45-50 minutes depending on your oven. Check to see if it’s done by piercing it with a large skewer. If it doesn’t scream, it’s done – I MEAN, if it comes out clean, it’s done…

Let cool on a wire rack, when the bundt has cooled and you are mentally ready, turn the pan over onto a wire rack. All goes well the bunt will pop right out – let it cool off a bit more until you are ready to serve.

I just love the movement and color of the layers when you cut into it. The prettiest of cakes with that perfect mochi chew.