What is so unusual about these mysterious desserts? The fact is, classic mochi cakes consist of glutinous rice dough prepared in an unconventional way. Additionally, this dough is filled with various fillings, which are also completely unusual for us - this is a paste made from sweet beans, boiled and ground.

Mochi with filling is called wagashi and outside of Asia it is they who have become popular, since the fillings add at least a little sweetness to an unusual dessert for us. Today, there are many fillings for wagashi, and it is not at all necessary to abandon the idea of ​​​​making this dessert just because of the lack of bean paste. Moreover, making mochi and wagashi cakes is completely simple.

Ingredients for the dough:

• Rice flour – 150 gr.
• Powdered sugar – 50 gr.
• Water – 300 ml.
• Starch for sprinkling (corn is best) – 50 g.
• Food coloring if you want to color the brownies.

For the filling, you can take chocolate, peanut or sesame paste, jam (do not confuse it with jam, jam holds its shape better and your cake will not “flow” with it) or boiled condensed milk. The main thing to remember is that the filling should not be liquid, but it should be soft enough to harmonize with the delicate rice dough.

Dessert recipe

1. First of all, mix the rice flour and powdered sugar in a small saucepan, iron bowl or double boiler.
2. After this, carefully add water to the mixture and mix.
3. Then put it in a water bath, stirring from time to time, or turn on the double boiler. The preparation time for our dough will be about 20 minutes. The finished mass should be elastic and a little “rubbery”.
4. After the mass “reaches”, carefully pull it out onto a table surface sprinkled with starch. The mixture should be thick enough to form into a ball.
5. Using your hands, form a sausage from a ball about 5-6 cm in diameter.
6. We cut the “sausage” into circles by analogy with dumplings. Flatten each circle with your hands and immediately put about a teaspoon of filling in the middle, then cover the filling with dough so that you end up with a ball.
7. Lightly roll each ball in starch and place on a plate.

So, the cakes are ready! However, such a dessert must be eaten within a few hours after preparation, otherwise it will dry out, crack and lose all its unique taste.

Classic mochi without filling is made in almost the same way.

Classic mochi

1. The mixture needs to be kept in a water bath a little longer.
2. Place it on the surface to form not a ball, but a rectangle.
3. Then simply cut the rectangle into small squares, roll in starch (for sweetness, you can add a little powdered sugar to the starch) and place on a dish.

You also need to eat them as quickly as possible. If there is still some mochi left, you can freeze them, but you need to defrost them in a bag or under film so that during the defrosting process the cakes do not dry out and become airy. As you can see, the process of making these cakes will only take half an hour, but the resulting dessert will undoubtedly surprise you with its unusual taste!

Try it, bon appetit!

Video recipe for making Mochi cakes

You can buy rice flour ready-made, or you can prepare it yourself; for this you need a coffee grinder or a cereal mill.
Pour cold water over the rice and leave to swell for 2 hours, or preferably overnight.
Drain the soaked rice. Transfer the rice to a napkin or towel, and cover with a napkin on top as well. Dry the rice lightly by pressing it with your palm. Do not try to dry the rice completely, you just need to collect excess moisture.
Grind the rice in a coffee grinder and sift through a fine sieve. Large, unground particles can be re-ground.
If you do not use rice flour right away, it must be poured onto paper and completely dried for several hours. Place the dry rice flour in a dry box, close tightly and store in the refrigerator.

Let's move on to preparing the mochi filling.
I prepared different fillings, I will describe a few of them.
First you need to prepare the base of the filling, and then add other ingredients.
Mix the milk thoroughly with sugar and yolks, cook, stirring constantly, until thickened, ~ 10 minutes. You need to stir so that the yolk does not curdle, but if such a nuisance happens, beat the cream with a blender or pass through a sieve.

Pour gelatin with cold boiled water and leave to swell for 20 minutes.
The swollen one should be melted in a water bath or in the microwave at full power for half a minute. Pour gelatin into cream, stir until smooth.
Cool the cream and add mascarpone to it.
You can buy mascarpone ready-made or prepare it according to the recipe in which I described how it is possible.

For the filling I used food coloring, vanilla and mint flavors and 3in1 instant coffee

For the Banana filling, mash the banana and add the base to it, mix well. Cover the filling with film and place in the freezer.
Divide the remaining cream base into 3 parts.
For the Tiramisu filling, mix 1/3 of the base with vanilla and instant coffee. Cover the filling with film and place in the freezer.
For the “Mint” filling, mix 1/3 of the cream base with mint essence and lemon juice. Place the filling in the freezer.
For the “Blood Orange” filling, squeeze the juice out of an orange; it took me 1.5 oranges. Add sugar to orange juice and put everything on fire. Pour cold water over the starch and mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps. As soon as the orange juice boils, pour in the starch suspension in a thin stream, while stirring the juice constantly. Boil. Cover with film and leave to cool to room temperature. Transfer the cooled cream to the freezer. Add vanilla to the remaining 1/3 of the cream base. This filling will consist of orange cream and vanilla cream.
To make the “Strawberry” filling, rub frozen or fresh strawberries through a sieve, add sugar to the resulting puree, mix and cook. Mix starch with cold water and pour into boiling puree in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, cover with film and leave to cool.

When all the fillings are ready, you can proceed to preparing the mochi. Make each batch of mochi one at a time. Since rice dough dries quickly and ceases to be elastic.
Mix rice flour, water, lemon juice, powdered sugar and coloring/cocoa. You can cook the dough in a saucepan, stirring constantly over low heat until you get a lump of dough. But it’s easier to do this in the microwave for 1 minute at full power. Remove from microwave and stir. If you think the dough is very soft, microwave it for another minute. The dough sticks very strongly to your hands and the table. Sprinkle the table with starch and transfer the hot dough onto it. You need to work right away with the dough still hot, it cools quickly and looks like plasticine. Hands and table should be constantly sprinkled with starch.

Even if something doesn’t work out the first time, you can gather the dough into a ball and work with it again. The dough is very pleasant to work with. You can make mochi with your children; they will appreciate this colorful dough.
You can make mochi using a special device for dumplings.
Tear off a piece of dough, flatten it in your palm into a flat cake 4-5 mm thick, put the filling in the middle and gather the dough into a knot. Tear off excess dough and reuse.

I made chocolate mochi with tiramisu filling and banana filling.
Green mochi - mint filling
The mint filling can be prepared in chocolate dough, it will be delicious, because... chocolate loves mint.
Red mochi with blood orange and vanilla cream filling and strawberry filling

I added the dye literally at the tip of the knife.
I used corn starch only because I like it better, but you can also use potato starch.
Sprinkle the finished mochi generously with starch/cocoa to prevent them from sticking together.
I read somewhere that ready-made mochi should be heated in the microwave for a few seconds and then put in the freezer, but I didn’t do that.
From my limited experience, I realized that it would be better and more correct to thicken the filling with starch or agar-agar.

This is what commercial rice flour looks like. It is grayish in color, unlike the one I made myself. I found it on the Internet and bought 1 kg to try. Despite the fact that it is not as snow-white as the one at home, I liked working with it more. For homemade flour, you need to add less liquid than to store-bought flour. But in any case, the good thing is that even if you overdo it with liquid, you can cook it a little longer and the liquid will evaporate and the flour will swell.
Since each rice requires a different amount of liquid, liquid should be added gradually to the first portion.

Step 1. Mix rice flour with powdered sugar. Divide the mixture into three parts, add water to one, a mixture of water and carrot juice to the other, and a mixture of water and spinach juice to the third. Cover the bowl with each type of dough with cling film and place in the microwave for 2 minutes or in a water bath for 10 minutes. Brew the dough

The finished dough should fall from the spoon in a lump.

Step 2. Grind the pre-soaked dried apricots in a blender. Cut the apples into cubes, sprinkle with sugar and lightly caramelize. Mix the prepared apples with crushed biscuits

Step 3. Sprinkle the working surface with starch, place the dough on it, press it down to form a thin layer, and cut it into several pieces. Place the filling in the middle of each piece, fold the edges and form a ball. Then press the ball a little on the sides to make the cake shape flatter. Brush off the starch from the finished cake with a brush.