Mochi Time

This week I spent time with my cousin Jacqueline, who is a bit of a Japan-o-phile. She had the brilliant idea of hand-making mochi balls. This is not a tutorial, because honestly, I she did most of the making and it was way too messy for me to even pick up my camera. Also... ours looked... not like mochi should look.

Mochi is a Japanese dessert made from rice flour, water, sugar and potato starch. It is a sticky, glutinous, sweet dumpling that can be filled with fruit (daifuku), flavoured, coloured or plain. And it is devlishly hard to make properly. Jacqueline found instructions on YouTube from a user called 'cookingwithdog'.

...Yes. Cooking with Dog.

In short, make sure you have a lot of potato flour and you are deft with your hands. And you shouldn't be afraid of mess. The woman in that video was a professional.

The ones that Jac and I made look like... doughy blue rocks. But they were soft. We did make it properly, but it took a good 2 hours if not more. And they didn't look great. We filled them with peaches instead and flavoured some with vanilla extract. Fresh mochi is so good! But clearly, requires practice.

Jacqueline about to enjoy Vanilla Peach Mochi!