Matcha Green Tea Ice Cream with Matcha Mochi Bits

Since I had some extra matcha powder and glutinous rice flour from making the matcha mochi cupcakes, I decided to try making matcha green tea ice cream with matcha mochi bits.  I was still traumatized by the time I tried to make mochi wrapped ice cream so I decided to just cut up the mochi and swirl it into the ice cream this time.  Of course, I (once again) underestimated the stickiness of fresh cooked mochi and ended up stretching and hacking it into bits instead of properly cutting it.  If there's anything I learned from this process it's that you can never use enough cornstarch!

For the ice cream I adapted the ice cream base from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home by adding matcha powder.

After making a batch of the matcha green tea ice cream, I noticed that the matcha powder wasn't really dissolving into the ice cream base and was clumping up instead.  I thought it would go away in the churning process but you can still see bits of matcha powder in the picture above.  Compare that with the picture below of the second batch I made.  Can you guess what simple ingredient made the matcha powder dissolve more easily?

Alcohol!  Or in this particular case, vodka.  I think it has something to do with it being more non-polar than water (yay masters degree in chemistry from an Ivy League school!).  By mixing the matcha powder in some vodka first and then mixing it with the rest of the ice cream base you get a nice, smooth result.

Matcha Green Tea Ice Cream with Matcha Mochi Bits
makes about 1 quart

For the matcha mochi bits: (adapted from Come On, Ilene!)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water, divided
1/2 cup glutinous rice flour
1 teaspoon matcha powder
Cornstarch

Prepare a baking sheet by covering it with wax paper or a Silpat and coating it generously with cornstarch. 

Dissolve the sugar into 3/4 cup of water in a small saucepan over medium-low heat to make a simple syrup.

In a medium microwaveable mixing bowl, mix the remaining 1/4 cup water with the glutinous rice flour and matcha powder until smooth.

Cover the bowl and microwave on high for 5 minutes.  Remove the bowl from the microwave (be careful, it will be very hot!) and stir again.

Pour in the simple syrup and keep stirring.

At first it will look kind of gross and lumpy but eventually it was all even out and you'll get a nice, thick goo.

Pour the mochi batter onto the prepared baking sheet and sprinkle more cornstarch on top.  Let the mochi cool.  You can put the sheet in the fridge or freezer to hurry this process along.

Once the mochi is firm, distribute the top layer of cornstarch evenly with your fingers to coat any shiny areas. Flip it over on a cutting board and make sure the back side is evenly coated as well.

When the mochi is completely cool, cut into small bits and pieces and continue to coat with extra cornstarch while cutting to avoid letting the pieces stick together.

Freeze the mochi bits until the ice cream is ready to pack.

For the matcha green tea ice cream: (adapted from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home)
2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) cream cheese, softened
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon matcha green tea powder
1 tablespoon vodka
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Mix about 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a smooth slurry. Whisk the cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth.  Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

Mix the matcha powder with the vodka and stir until smooth.

Combine the remaining milk, the cream, sugar, and corn syrup in a 4-quart saucepan, bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat, and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry.

Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.

Remove from heat and add some of the hot ice cream base to the matcha vodka mixture.  Stir until smooth and then add back to the rest of the ice cream base.

Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag and submerge the sealed bag in the ice bath. Let stand, adding more ice as necessary, until cold, about 30 minutes.

Pour the ice cream base into the frozen canister and spin until thick and creamy.

Pack the ice cream into a storage container, adding the matcha mochi bits in between layers of ice cream.  Press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface and seal with an airtight lid.  Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.

Just like with mochi-wrapped ice cream, the mochi bits stay nice and pillowy soft even after frozen.  It makes an interesting contrast to the usual hard and crunchy mix-ins for ice creams.  And the amount of vodka used to dissolve the matcha powder was so minimal I can't even taste it in the ice cream.

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Matcha Mochi Cupcakes

The dessert for Japan Night needed to be easy to make in bulk quantities, preferably okay with being made ahead of time, easy to serve, and Japanese-inspired.  Red bean or black sesame ice cream would've been great on such a hot day, but my little ice cream maker wouldn't have been able to handle the load and having to scoop out enough ice cream for almost a hundred people would've been way too time consuming.

Then I remembered Jen's matcha mochi cupcakes which fit the bill exactly!  The ingredients, except for the matcha, are basically the same as my recipe for mochi cake, but the proportions are a little different.  There's less liquid, which I think worked better for the cupcake form.  Compared to the mochi cake, the cupcakes have a lot more surface area to get all nice and crusty while still retaining a ridiculously moist and chewy interior.  I do prefer a little less sugar than called for in this recipe, but everyone at the event loved the cupcakes, so that's just a very personal preference.

Matcha Mochi Cupcakes (from Tiny Urban Kitchen)

makes about 26 cupcakes or 56 mini-cupcakes

1 lb. glutinous rice flour

2 tablespoons matcha powder

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 cups milk

2 cups sugar

3 eggs, beaten

Combine all ingredients and mix until well combined. 

Brush the inside of each muffin "well" generously with vegetable oil. 

Fill the muffin tins almost to the top.  The cupcakes will rise in the oven but shrink a lot as they cool.

Bake at 350°F for around 30-35 minutes. Please note that ovens may vary and you should start checking before the actual listed time is up. Test by inserting a toothpick or sharp metal object (e.g., a knife) into a muffin. If it comes out cleanly, it is done. 

The muffins are easier to remove if you let them cool first. However, if you've oiled the pan well enough, they should just slide out.

Enjoy warm or at room temperature.

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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. =)

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Moffles!

I first heard about moffles through The Kitchn (btw, in case you haven't seen, my bunny buns were featured as a Delicious Link on The Kitchn a few days back!) and decided if there was any way I could get my hands on a waffle iron and mochi blocks, I would definitely try it out. Well, luckily, my friends Jen and Tammy had a waffle iron and mochi blocks, which Tammy got from a Korean grocery store. I invited them over with their respective supplies and said I'd provide the toppings.

At first I was thinking more traditional waffle toppings like maple syrup, whipped cream, bananas, Nutella, etc., but then Jen suggested we stick to more traditional mochi accompaniments, such as sweetened red beans, peanuts ground with sugar, and black sesame powder, which I thought was a brilliant idea. Even better, when I was at Super 88 looking for black sesame seeds, I found instant sesame powder mix, which according to the ingredients, already had sugar in it. As for the peanut powder, I just used a food processor to grind a half cup of raw peanuts with 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Just make sure you don't grind too long or else you'll end up with peanut butter. You basically want it to look like this:

I added sweetened condensed milk to the toppings because I like how it goes with sweetened red beans, and I thought the powders might need something kind of wet and sticky to bind to. Finally, I made some frozen yogurt on the spot using a cup of vanilla yogurt, 1/3 cup of sour cream, and 1 bottle of Chinese yogurt drink. I was aiming for something like Pinkberry frozen yogurt, but I failed to add sugar, and the texture wasn't quite there. Still edible, though. =)

So according to the article, you just throw some mochi blocks on to the waffle iron and let it do its thing. I set the waffle iron on high, sprayed it with some cooking oil, put two blocks in the center, and closed the top. The blocks start off dry and dense; basically nothing you'd ever try to eat as is. But as the heat started cooking the mochi, the blocks began to expand and fill out the entire waffle iron. After a couple minutes, we were able to press down on the iron to close it, and we took the moffles off the iron once they were coming out the sides.

Then we cut each moffle into quarters and started experimenting with the toppings. I found that the moffle itself didn't have too much flavor, which is not a bad thing as it was really the texture that stands out. The outside is crispy, almost crackly, while the inside is soft and almost gooey. In a word, awesome.

I really, really liked the sesame powder topping as it reminded me of the sesame filled tang yuan, and the red bean and sweetened condensed milk topped moffles were pretty good too. I wasn't as big of a fan of the peanut powder, but then, I'm not a big fan of peanuts in general.

I would totally make moffles again, if ever such a confluence of a waffle maker and mochi blocks being in my kitchen happened again. And if you have a waffle maker, I can totally find some mochi blocks to bring by. ;)

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Mochi Ice Cream

Since I had already made the red bean ice cream, I thought I'd try to make mochi ice cream with it. There a bunch of directions on-line, and it seemed simple enough. Heck, you didn't even need to turn on the stove; you cook the mochi in the microwave! But what the recipes don't tell you is that mochi is the stickiest thing on earth! It'll stick to your fingers, your hands, the bowl, the utensils you use, the utensils you use to try to unstick it from the utensils you use... I got so frustrated after trying to make 3 of them (2 of which ended up in my mouth rather than back in the freezer because they were so ugly), I gave up. But here's the recipe if you want to try. =)

Mochi Ice Cream (adapted from here)

makes 10

Ice cream flavor of your choice
100 grams glutinous rice flour
180 ml water
50 grams sugar
Cornstarch

Let the ice cream sit in room temperature for a few minutes or until it becomes soften. Scoop and roll the ice cream into 10 round balls. Put the ice cream balls back in the freezer to re-harden.

Mix the water, sugar and flour together well in a microwavable mixing bowl. Cover and microwave for 2 minutes. Stir batter, re-cover, and microwave for another 30 seconds. Stir once more and allow to cool.

Cover the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish with cornstarch. Once the mochi is cool, spread it out in the dish. Cut and divide into 10 pieces.

Pick up one piece of dough. Flatten it with your palm and wrap it around a ball of ice cream. Repeat this process for the other pieces of mochi and ice cream.

Place it in the freezer to re-harden the ice cream. About 10 minutes before serving, let sit at room temperature to soften slightly.

Honestly, it looks like a frozen thumb on a mini-bun....

I think next time (if there is a next time) I try to make mochi ice cream, I might try this recipe, which includes corn syrup in the mochi (to keep it soft and pliable when frozen) and freezing the mochi before wrapping the ice cream. I think this might make the mochi less sticky to work with and obviously prevent the ice cream from melting too much while you're working with it.

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Nian Gao (aka Mochi Cake)

Another Chinese dessert that is traditionally eating in the winter, or more specifically, for the New Year, is nian gao. Similar to the Korean dduk and Japanese mochi, it is made from glutinous rice flour, which can be found in Asian grocery stores. Make sure you get the glutinous version (I buy the green bag with the 3 elephants on it) versus regular rice flour (the red bag with the 3 elephants on it). This recipe (from Joanna Lee) has sweetened red beans baked into it and is very rich because of all the butter. You could use a little less butter, but really, why would you want to?

Nian Gao (Mochi Cake with Red Beans)
makes 24 pieces

1 stick unsalted butter, melted (and cooled to room temperature)
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups milk, warmed to a little hotter than a fever
1 pound (16 ounces) glutinous rice flour (the green bag with the 3 elephants on it)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 (18.75 ounce) can red bean paste or sweetened red beans

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and milk. Stir in the rice flour and baking powder. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Drop red bean paste by scant teaspoonfuls onto the top of the cake. If spoonfuls are too big, the filling will sink to the bottom.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until cake springs back when lightly touched. It should be golden.

Serve small slices of this very rich cake at room temperature or slightly warmed.

The hardest part about making this dish is getting all the ingredients to mix. You don't want the butter to be too hot or else it will cook the eggs, but if the milk is straight out of the fridge it will solidify the butter. If you do run into that problem, you could try microwaving the mixture just enough so that the butter melts again, but I think it is easier to get the milk warm before adding it to the butter.

For extra decadence, you can slice the nian gao into thin slices, dip them in beaten egg, and pan-fry for Cantonese-style nian gao.

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