Butter Mochi Cupcakes

For Annie's birthday party this past Sunday, I wanted to make ice cream and cupcakes and decided on black sesame ice cream and butter mochi cupcakes after she said she liked the Asian flavor ice creams and requested a non-citrusy cupcake. I've made mochi cake before, but when I looked up recipes for the cupcakes on-line, I noticed that there was a lot less milk used in the recipe I found than in the recipe I usually used. I also came across recipes for butter mochi, which used coconut milk in addition to or instead of milk. So I decided to combine the two to make butter mochi cupcakes!

Butter Mochi Cupcakes with Sweetened Red Beans
makes about 26 cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter, melted (and cooled to room temperature)
1 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 can coconut milk
1 pound (16 ounces) glutinous rice flour (the green bag with the 3 elephants on it)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 (18.75 oz.) can sweetened red beans (or red bean paste)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners and spray the inside of the liners with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and coconut milk. Stir in the rice flour and baking powder and mix well.

Fill the cupcake liners about halfway with the batter. Place about a teaspoon of the sweetened red beans on top of the batter. Divide the remaining batter evenly among the liners. The liners should be 80-90% full.

Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven or until golden brown.

Since I wasn't going to frost these, I experimented with a couple of ways to decorate them. For the cupcake in the very first picture picture, I just left it as is with the red bean sandwiched between two layers of batter. I also tried using a toothpick to swirl the red bean layer around with the batter and putting some whole red beans on top in a flower pattern. I ended up liking the first kind the most because they were the only ones that got nice and golden brown on top. The swirls that I tried were really too thin and faint, and the whole red beans ended up migrating during the baking process so you couldn't even tell it used to be a flower.

In the end, I thought the cupcakes were just okay. They tasted fine, but they didn't develop the nice crust that I get when I make my normal recipe for mochi cake. Whether that's because of the tweaked recipe with less liquid or because there was no contact with a metal surface or a combination of the two, I'm not sure. I also didn't think the texture of the cupcake was conducive to cupcake form. It was soft and sticky (as it should be) which meant that it stuck to the cupcake liner (even though I sprayed it with cooking spray) and lost its shape as it was eaten. In my opinion, you should be able to easily peel the liner away from a cupcake, and it shouldn't turn into a blob when you try to eat it. So I think I will stick to making mochi cake in sheet cake form with my original recipe, although I may try it with coconut milk instead of regular milk next time.

Stay tuned for the black sesame ice cream recipe which turned out much better. =)