Tag: sweet

Daifuku (Red Bean Mochi) Recipe

writ­ten 12/8/24, updat­ed 12/8/24

What

Japan­ese dessert. It’s mochi (sweet gluti­nous rice flour), a chewy rice cake, wrapped around a fill­ing, usu­al­ly anko (sweet red bean paste). Can be filled with oth­er ingre­di­ents like mung bean, fresh cut fruit, ice cream, or cus­tard, and col­ored with pow­ders (such as matcha pow­der), fresh fruit puree, or food col­or­ing.

This recipe is made in the microwave for ease, but can also be steamed

*See Notes for more details

Ingredients

1 Cup Shi­rata­mako or Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour (*See Notes)

¼ — ½ Cup Sug­ar (more or less as desired)

1 Cup Water

1 Cup Anko (sweet red bean paste, bought or made)

Katakuriko (pota­to starch or corn­starch as need­ed for dust­ing)

Supplies

Heat-proof bowl

Sil­i­cone Spat­u­la

Sil­i­cone Whisk

Plas­tic Wrap/Microwave Cov­er

Parch­ment Paper

Bak­ing Sheet/Tray

Time and Serving

Time: 5 min­utes com­bine + 2 min­utes microwave + 20 min­utes shap­ing = 30 min­utes

Serv­ing: 8 pieces

Directions

  • Pre­pare your Anko fill­ing
  • On a tray or bak­ing sheet, do the same thing and set aside (this is where you’ll put the formed dai­fuku)
  • Whisk togeth­er Flour (1 Cup) and Sug­ar (¼ — ½ Cup, to your desire)
  • Add the Water (1 Cup) and com­bine with the sil­i­cone spat­u­la until it forms a smooth bat­ter
  • Cov­er with either plas­tic wrap or microwave lid
  • Microwave for about 1.5 min­utes
  • Remove and stir well
  • Return to microwave for anoth­er 1.5 min­utes
  • It should have formed a shiny, smooth dough, a some­what hard lump, dif­fer­ent from the bat­ter from before
  • If not, then return for 30 sec­onds at a time, stir­ring in between
  • Dust your parch­ment paper work­space with either pota­to starch or corn­starch
  • Scrape the dough out onto your work­space (Be care­ful, it’s going to be HOT)
  • Sprin­kle starch as need­ed to make it less sticky
  • Divide the hot dough into equal por­tions
  • Roll them into flat disks
  • Put your Anko fill­ing into the mid­dle and pinch the ends to close them
  • Place it seam side down on your pre-dust­ed tray
  • Con­tin­ue to make the rest
  • This is best enjoyed right away, or cov­er and refrig­er­ate up to 2 days

Notes

Clean-Up Tips

  • Soak your bowls and imple­ments in water to help loosen it up
  • Try not to dump the wet flour down the drain if you don’t want to deal with a clog
  • If it’s being stub­born even after soak­ing, use the sil­i­cone spat­u­la to scrape the wet dough into the trash­can

Katakuriko = pota­to starch

Mochi vs Dan­go

  • Dan­go: term for ball-shaped foods
  • While these days the lines have blurred between the two desserts’ ingre­di­ents, tra­di­tion­al­ly, the dif­fer­ence is that Mochi was made from steamed gluti­nous RICE (grain) and pound­ed in a pes­tle, while Dan­go was made from non-gluti­nous rice FLOUR, mixed with water, knead­ed, then steamed or boiled.
  • Dan­go is made like boba, where the lit­tle balls are boiled

When made the same way (Flour, sug­ar, and boil lit­tle balls) tapi­o­ca starch (cas­sa­va) will make boba, while rice flour will make dan­go.

Mochiko vs Shi­rata­mako

  • Both flours are sim­i­lar to each oth­er but dif­fer in pro­cess­ing
  • Both can be used in oth­er dish­es like bak­ery goods and as thick­en­ing agents in savory dish­es
Mochiko
  • Ground when rice is dry
  • Less work­ing time until hard­en­ing
  • Sticky, chewy tex­ture
  • Stronger fla­vor
  • Fine­ly ground flour
Shiratamako
  • Ground when rice is wet, then dried
  • Stretch­i­er, even when cool
  • Smoother tex­ture, more del­i­cate
  • Good for refined desserts
  • Coarse, gran­u­lar tex­tured flour

Vegan Dried Fruit Milk Sweet Bread

writ­ten 2/18/2024, updat­ed 9/25/2024

What

Sweet bread with dried fruit and nuts, made veg­an, with­out eggs or cow’s milk

Ingredients

Main (amounts also in instruc­tions)

½ Cup + ~4 Cups All-Pur­pose or Bread Flour

1½ Cup Plant-based Milk (e.g. Oat milk)

1Tbsp Corn­starch

~½ Cup Water (boiled)

2¼ tsp or 1 enve­lope Active Dry Yeast

2 tsp + ~½ Cup Sug­ar (Depends on how sweet you want it)

1Tbsp Salt

¼ Cup Veg­an But­ter

Sup­plies: Elec­tric Stand Mix­ture, Mea­sur­ing Cups, Spat­u­la, Plas­tic Wrap, Non-Stick Spray, Loaf Pan/Baking Sheet/other Bread Pans, Cool­ing Rack, Bread Bags

Option­al: Hon­ey, Nuts, Seeds, Cin­na­mon, Red Bean Paste, Fruit, Corn Syrup

Time

Prep (1.5 hours total) + Rest­ing (2 hours total) + Bak­ing (40 min­utes) = ~4.1 hours Total

Serving Size

2 bread loaves

Making

  • Remove veg­an but­ter from refrig­er­a­tor to warm to room tem­per­a­ture

Yeast (~15 min­utes)

  • Heat Milk (1½ Cup) to about 105–115F
  • Pour into stand mix­er bowl
  • Dis­solve Sug­ar (2 tsp) and option­al­ly, Hon­ey
  • Add Active Dry Yeast (2¼ tsp or 1 enve­lope)
  • Light­ly stir
  • Cov­er and let bloom for about 5–10 min­utes (until it foams and smells like yeast)

Flour Paste (aka Tangzhong method) — adds a creamy tex­ture

  • In a mix­ing bowl, com­bine Flour (½ Cup) and Corn­starch (1Tbsp) with Boil­ing Water (add ~½ Cup first then more if need­ed. I used between 2⁄3 Cup and 3⁄4)
  • Whip vig­or­ous­ly until smooth. It will be sticky (I tried a whisk first but it was either too small or I did­n’t add enough water and it got all stuck inside. Switched to a spoon for bet­ter results)

Option­al: Fruits and Nuts *see Notes sec­tion

  • Soak dried fruit in warm water
  • Toast wal­nuts

Dough (~15 min­utes)

  • By now the Yeast should have bloomed quite well
  • Add the Flour Paste and dis­solve with a pad­dle attach­ment at Stir speed
  • Dis­solve Sug­ar (½ Cup for sweet bread, less for less sweet)
  • Add Salt (1Tbsp)
  • Incre­men­tal­ly add Flour (~4 Cups total) until it starts turn­ing into dough
  • Switch to the dough hook, increase speed to lev­el 2, and fin­ish adding the flour (scrape down the sides every so often)
  • When it is well com­bined, but still sticky cov­er and let rest for about 10 min­utes (good time to wash dish­es)

Dough Part 2 (5–10 min­utes)

  • Cut Veg­an But­ter (¼ Cup) into lit­tle cubes
  • Add to mix­ing bowl
  • Run at speed lev­el 2 until well-mixed
  • Dough should come nice­ly off the sides of the bowl. Add small amounts of flour as need­ed
  • When it is smooth and tacky, cov­er

Rise #1 (1 hour)

  • Cov­er and place in a warm place for an hour until it has dou­bled or tripled in size
  • If using fruits and/or nuts, drain the fruits and prep nuts/seeds if you haven’t
  • Pre­pare any oth­er fill­ings or addi­tives

Dough Part 3

Real­ly big now!
Prep sur­face
Divide how you’d like
Spread fruit if using
Shape

Toast­ed wal­nuts
Cran­ber­ries and wal­nuts
Fold up
Roll
Flat­ten and fold again until you’re hap­py
Shape

  • Either turn stand mix­er on to speed lev­el 2 (for 2 min­utes) to remove air, or sim­ply punch it down
  • Pre­pare loaf pans by plac­ing parch­ment paper
  • Light­ly flour work­ing sur­face
  • Turn out dough and decide how you want divide
  • If adding fruits/nuts/paste, flat­ten the dough and add, then fold togeth­er, and roll. When sat­is­fied, place seam side down onto pans
  • If no addi­tions, shape and roll into prop­er shape for pans, remem­ber­ing that bread will rise again and expand when bak­ing

Rest #2 (1 hour)

  • Spray the top of the dough with cook­ing spray to pre­vent plas­tic wrap from stick­ing to the dough lat­er
  • Cov­er and place in a warm loca­tion until dou­bled in size

Bake Prep (5 min­utes)

Wow
These are huge
Syrup and Hon­ey Wash

  • Your pref­er­ence of wash (Option­al)
  • Can be Syrup Wash (1:1 Corn Syrup to Water) or any com­bi­na­tion or ratio of the syrup to water. Can add hon­ey to the ratio
  • I used 2:1 Corn Syrup to Hon­ey, and added a dash of water
  • If adding top­pings to bread, add it
  • Cut vent lines in the top of the loaves
  • Here, I messed up because I did­n’t grease the plas­tic or the dough, so I had to re-shape the loaves and let them rise a lit­tle again
Oh noooo
Welp. Miss­ing some dough here… Time to reshape
This one came out fine for some rea­son

Bake (40 min­utes)

  • Pre­heat oven to 350 F
  • Uncov­er dough and brush tops with Wash
  • Bake for about 40 min­utes until gold­en
  • Brush with Wash again after remov­ing from oven
  • Let cool before slic­ing!
  • Impor­tant: Make sure to remove any parch­ment paper from under the bread! Oth­er­wise, the bot­tom will remain wet while the rest cools

Notes

  • Dried fruit: (like raisins, cran­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, etc.) can be fold­ed into the dough, but can soak up mois­ture. To coun­ter­act that, soak them in hot water
  • Nuts: can be chopped and fold­ed in raw but can also be toast­ed to improve fla­vor. Hard­er nuts should be soaked in warm water oth­er­wise they can be too hard after bak­ing
  • Seeds: If top­ping with seeds, do not toast before­hand as they will burn dur­ing bak­ing
  • Paste: Same game­plan as the oth­er add-ins. Pre­pare to your taste, then spread it like you’re but­ter­ing toast, then roll, spread, roll, etc until you’re hap­py

9/22/24: Made both Sweet Red Bean Paste and Dried Fruit bread. Red bean paste from a can. Did filled buns, 1 twist, and 1 loaf of that. Just 1 loaf of dried fruit bread, using dried apri­cots, cher­ries, and cran­ber­ries. Should have cut the apri­cots even small­er (did quar­ters). For the loaf, added some orange extract to the red bean. Might have added too much, but it does give it an inter­est­ing taste. Did not use a glaze and they’re a tad over­done.

Fruit
Red bean