Mochi Fest

Whenever our relatives come visit from Maui, they bring mochi and manju from Homemade Bakery. Al-la-la it is so delicious. WELL, Jordan is visiting and neglected to bring it! So, on a slow Saturday morning I got the idea of trying to copy our favorite bakery with these weird delicacies. I have made various mochi lots, but never filled with red bean paste - this was my goal for today.

The internet is an awesome place - I had ideas, but could not find how to do them anywhere. After reading many blogs, and tried making the soft mochi with red bean paste inside. However, I didn't want to do it the long-suffering old-fashioned way. SO, I did them in a mini muffin pan. This is how it looked right out of pan...
After dusting with potato starch....NEXT, I added a few eggs to batter, and placed them in a regular size muffin pan. These are Joseph's favorite, although he does not understand why in the world I would put food coloring in them.
Since I was on a roll, I thought, Hmm...I wonder what the difference between manju and mochi is - manju is wheat flour and mochi sweet rice flour. I did it! They actually look pretty close to Homemade Bakery too. We DID determine that the Canola oil I used had too much flavor in it - causing the manju to "taste like my mom's fried Talapia" ( which we figured out was the oil taste)
Last but not least I tried the pan kind, layering the red bean paste in it - which was very difficult to spread on warm layers. I have to improve on this one somehow. It is VERY delicious, but tough to handle. This is before the dusting - post-dusting they are beautiful but too soft.
I may have to do it the old fashioned way, but who ever has a whole day for this kind of thing?