Yaki Manju

July 27th, 2011 by justJENN

This is one of those old skool recipes you’d find in a Hawaii church cookbook. Yaki means ‘to cook’ and manju is a sweet Japanese confection, like mochi but it uses regular flour instead, so there’s no chew. It’s more cake or in this case, cookie-like.

This recipe comes in handy when you don’t have butter. It uses very few ingredients and comes together rather quickly. This is one of O.G.’s FAVES.

ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup cold water
1 cup an (sweetened red bean)

I prefer smooth red bean for these cookies. An aka red bean is sweet and can be found in Japanese markets in cans and bags.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, prep a baking sheet with a silpat.

In a the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the flour, sugar and salt, adding the oil and water slowly.

Mix until combined and the dough starts to pull away.

Shape dough into small balls and then flatten it out. Add a Tablespoon of the an filling in the center.

To close, pinch the edges together, roll back into a ball and flatten slightly.

Place them on the prepped cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

A simple, crumbly-crisp cookie filled with delicious sweet an. Perfect with afternoon tea!