Quick and Easy Red Bean Mochi

Have you ever thought that making mochi is a sticky, time consuming and challenging business? I always hated getting my hands covered by gooey mochi dough and I never like touching my food too much with bare hands - that's why I always appreciate sushi chefs who wear gloves, even though I know that in Japan wearing gloves for making sushi is considered weird/unnatural. I am getting better and don't mind that much any more when the foods I am to eat have gone through some laborious 'hands on' experience...;). But it still can be a problem from time to time, I guess it's something psychological - I have just never been so fond on the idea of 'handmade' food - in the real sense of the word, even though I know that wearing gloves absolutely doesn't make the food cleaner or more hygienic.

Back to the mochi topic! I think most people find shaping mochi to be rather tricky because the glutinous rice flour has been steamed beforehand, making it very gluey. But if you make mochi using the Tangyuan technique, then the problem is somehow solved, because you do all the forming before the mochi dough is cooked. I tried this trick a few days ago and it worked very well. It made mochi making very simple and quick. But if you want to make something like 'ichigo daifuku', I think this technique might not work, because you have to cook the strawberries as well with the mochi and I am sure you don't want cooked strawberries inside your daifuku. This technique can be used if you want to make simple mochis without fillings, or mochis with paste fillings - I guess you know what I mean by this!

Quick and Easy Red Bean Mochi Makes 10
Ingredients	Calories
110 g glutinous rice flour	107
100 ml water	0
2 g vanilla essence	6
100 g red bean paste (anko)	320
Corn starch for dusting	30?
TOTAL	463 calories
	46 calories per serving

I didn't use sugar for the mochi dough because I didn't want extra calories for the mochi, especially because the anko is already sweet anyway. But feel free to add extra sugar to your liking to the mochi dough if you think it's necessary.

What to do:

Mochi Dough

• Combine the glutinous rice flour, water and vanilla essence in a bowl until mixed well. This dough should not stick to your hand. If it does, add more glutinous flour little by little, until the dough is no longer sticky.
  
• Make 10 balls from the dough.

Red Bean paste (anko)

• Simply make 10 balls from the red bean paste - these balls need to be smaller than the mochi balls.

Now wrap each anko ball inside a mochi ball. When you have filled in all 10 mochi balls with anko, cook them in boiling water. When they float, transfer them to a bowl of water (room temperature). The last step is to coat each mochi ball with corn starch. That's it!