Friday, November 18, 2011

{mochi cake recipe: matcha green tea, strawberry, blueberry}

have you ever tried mochi? yum. mochi is this asian snack that is made from a glutinous rice flour (not gluten), prepared in a variety of ways. when i think of mochi, i usually envision this white gooey chewy rice cake, filled with sweet red bean paste. but, it is probably most well known in the US for being filled with ice cream. Someone recently posted a link on facebook about mochi cake and my interest was peaked! The recipe that I followed seemed easy enough and sounded delicious. I love me some mochi and I love me some chewy cake. So many flavors to choose from...Green tea, strawberry, blueberry.... I figured, why decide? just make all of them at once! haha!


Its hard to describe the flavor, but it reminds me of a somewhat egg-y, chewy, dense cake. what is great about these mochi cakes is that the outside is slightly crunchy and the inside is chewy, so it creates this great texture. it tasted the best right out of the oven (be careful, don't burn your tongue though!) of all 3 flavors that i made, my favorite was definitely the strawberry mochi cake. i loved how the juice of the strawberry created a slightly gooey texture to the cake and it added this lovely acidity to the mochi cake. a few friends sampled the mochi cake and also loved the strawberry the most. my second favorite was the green tea {my mom's favorite though}. if i was going to make it again, i would probably add a little more matcha powder to make it even more potent. my least favorite was surprisingly the blueberry mochi cake. i thought i would love the blueberry mochi cake since i normally adore blueberry flavored cakes, but it was weirdly bland. maybe i should try fresh blueberries next time?

Here is the base recipe below.


Ingredients to the base: (recipe i followed was from JustJenn Recipes)
1 pound mochiko (1 box) {i purchased this at Marukai in Costa Mesa, California}
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup of butter, melted (2 sticks)
2 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

--For the green tea, buy matcha powder: full batter-use at least 2 tablespoons. (i purchased mine at marukai also)
{For me, since half of my batter was for the green tea mochi cakes, i only used 1 tablespoon.}

--For the strawberry mochi cake: i used fresh strawberries
--For the blueberry mochi cake: i tried frozen blueberries


To easily make all the flavors, I created the base {with no fruit and no green tea matcha powder}. I thought it would be fun to make them into little muffins, rather than a sheet cake. So, for the fruit flavored mochi cake, I spooned the base into the muffin tins (sprayed with Pam) with no liners. For the blueberry mochi cakes, I just sprinkled some frozen blueberries from Trader Joe's on the top, and just gently swirled it with a spoon to mix it in. I read to not overly mix it in, or else the color of the batter would turn a strange and unappetizing grey color. For the strawberry mochi cakes, I sliced fresh strawberries and placed them into the muffin tins. For the green tea, I used 1 tablespoon of the matcha powder and mixed it in with the remaining base.




Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Grease muffin tin with Pam or butter. I used Pam.
3. Stir sugar and melted butter
4. Add evaporated milk
5. Add eggs one at a time into the batter
6. Add vanilla extract
7. Carefully stir in mochiko, baking powder, and the pinch of salt
8. Add either the fresh fruit/frozen fruit, or the green tea matcha powder
9. Spoon into muffin tins
10. Bake for about 20-25 minutes
11. Let slightly cool, but eat while warm!

3 comments:

donna said...

yum! if you have any left, i'll gladly take them off your hands :)

yc said...

haha! i'll make some extra with my next batch donna! :) i'm thinking, maybe i'm going to try pumpkin, since thanksgiving is coming up...

Loreen said...

Thanks for sharing Matcha Recipe! Looks yummy!

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