Mochi with fresh strawberry and red bean paste filling
A few weeks ago, I found a recipe for mochi with strawberry filling on Une-deux senses. A whole strawberry wrapped inside a mochi. It looked so pretty! I love using strawberries in desserts. So I marked it on my to-do list. Strawberries were on sale this weekend so it was my chance to make it.
As I thought about the recipe, I was thinking that the strawberry may not be sweet enough for a filling. Plus, when I made handmade green tea mochi before, I put the filling in a ball. The odd shape of the strawberry bothered me. So I thought about wrapping the strawberry in another filling. I threw around some ideas like chocolate, red bean paste, cream. In the end, I thought I’d try the red bean paste but I still wasn’t so sure.
Then I saw a similar mochi with strawberry filling from Evan’s Kitchen Ramblings, where she had used strawberries wrapped in red bean paste. She said the flavors went well together, so I decided to try it.
The end result was great! I was surprised, but the strawberries and red bean paste went really well together. The slight tartness of the strawberry blended with the sweetness of the red bean (azuki) paste and created a filling that was just the right amount of sweetness.
Because I already made handmade green tea mochi before, I opted to make a regular, non-green tea flavored one. This microwave method of making mochi is still something I’m working on. I don’t usually have problems with the dough, but I have problems with making the mochi dough even. Sometimes it’s too thick, sometimes my mochi balls aren’t very round, etc. Usually in one batch, only a few come out pretty enough to photograph.
I really liked how these came out. But you do have to eat them soon since the strawberry is fresh. If the skin is too thin, the moisture from the strawberry begins to leak through.
Mochi with Strawberry and Red Bean Paste Filling
Ingredients
- 1 cup glutinous rice flour, (Mochiko or any other brand)
- 1/4 cup icing sugar
- 2/3 cup water
- 1/2 cup red bean paste
- 8 small strawberries, stems removed
- cornstarch or potato starch , for dusting
Instructions
- Wrap a strawberry with about 1 heaping tbsp of red bean paste and form a ball, so that the strawberry is covered in a thin layer of bean paste. Make 8 balls.
- Put 2/3 cup of water and 1/4 cup of sugar in a heat-resistant bowl and mix well. Add glutinous rice flour in the bowl and mix well. Put the bowl in microwave and heat the dough for two minutes. Stir the dough with a strong spoon. Heat the dough in microwave again for approximately 1 minute. Stir the mochi quickly.
- Dust a flat surface and the palm of your hand with some corn starch. Remove a chunk of hot mochi dough from the bowl and flatten and thin out dough. Put strawberry ball on mochi dough and wrap the mochi dough around it and squeeze to seal ends. Repeat the process until all the dough has been used up. The dough should be worked with while hot.
Is corn starch the same as corn flour?
Not usually. I guess some places may call it the same thing but I’ve seen them as different things too.
If you are ever in Fresno, CA, you have to go to Kogetsu-Do. They make the best fresh fruit mochi with strawberries, Strawberries & nutella, blueberries etc. They even have a thin mint mochi, with a thin mint cookie in the middle. Absolutely the BEST!
Wow the fruit mochi sound good. So does the mint mochi! I will definitely keep this place in mind if I’m in Fresno.
Some of the most common things you’ll find are red bean paste, white bean paste, black sesame paste, taro paste. You can also put chocolate ganache, ice cream, etc.
what other things can you put into Mochi?
OOh, nutella! I thought about chocolate and strawberries, but then I would have needed to make chocolate that had a consistency where I could wrap and shape it and that seemed too difficult, whereas the bean paste was already on hand. But with nutella I wouldn’t have to worry about making it myself. I’m definitely going to try nutella! Thanks!
you’re definitely right about the weird shape of the strawberry! it was sooo hard to wrap. what’s also yummy is strawberries and nutella wrapped in mochi! these look yummmmy