A few weekends back, a few of my Google friends held a dessert-making contest. I used to bake a little bit (way back in high school), and decided to take a shot. Armed with what little baking knowledge was left in me, and a manic devotion to all things mochi, I created the Cup-a-mochi-no. It is -- yes -- a normal cupcake wrapped around mochi wrapped around red bean paste. It is topped off with coconut frosting and another dollop of red bean paste. And it's delicious!
The idea came easily enough -- mixing mochi with other kinds of pastry has, in the past few years, been on the forefront of Chinese-American pastry in bakeries all over southern California. In certain bakeries, you can find bread with mochi and cream, red beans or taro paste in it. And some places even sell birthday cakes that have a layer of mushi mochi in the middle of soft pound cake. It was easy to imagine such a creation, but shrunk down to cupcake-scale (though it was difficult to persuade Mel that this was a good idea!)
The whole thing is pretty straightforward to make, though very time-consuming. First, you make the red bean mochis.
The easiest recipe that I found online for mochi dough -- using sweet rice flour and a microwave and taking little more than four minutes -- worked out pretty well. Instead of using 1 cup of water, I used 3/4 cup of coconut milk and 1/4 cup of water. I bought some red beans paste from 99 Ranch instead of making my own -- the dessert is already too experimental without that! I tried to fine one with as little sugar as possible, but it was still too sweet to my taste. Next time, I'll probably make the red beans paste myself to have more control over the sweetness.
Fresh out of the microwave, the dough will be very hot and very sticky. Cover your hands, a flat board and a round roller with corn starch. Take little balls of mochi dough, flatten into wraps, insert a dollop of red bean paste, and pinch the wrap together. The wrap can hold more red bean paste than you might think -- the mochi is very flexible, so just stretch it a bit when you're pinching it close.
Next, I made the cupcake. I took this reference recipe, but cut the sugar in half (out of necessity -- I was out of sugar at that point!). I also substituted coconut milk for milk (probably not all that wise, but it turned out okay). Lacking any electrical beaters, I had to cream the butter by hand, which was hard work.
I put a spoonful of cupcake batter into the cupcake holder, plopped a piece of red bean mochi into it, and covered the mochi with more batter. Be sure not to fill it up too high, or it will overflow!
While the cupcakes are baking, I made coconut-cream frosting from this recipe. I used only 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, which was plenty. Put the frosting on the cupcakes once they're nicely baked and cooled.
Finally, decorate the cupcake with some toasted sesame seeds and almond slices, garnish with more red bean paste and some hint, and you're good to go!
We didn't win the dessert contest, but it was very yummy nonetheless :-) Here's the full slide show of pictures I took in the process. Enjoy!