Baked Mochi Rice Cakes with red(adzuki) beans - 脆皮紅豆年糕
Matcha Mochi cake with red bean, topped with sesame (抹茶脆皮紅豆年糕)
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 45-60 minute
Serves: 6-8 servings (each, 18-24 servings total)
Ingredients:
For the mochi cake:
1 lb of sweet rice flour. This can also be called glutinous or sticky rice flour (though it does not contain gluten)
4 eggs
2 cans of coconut milk, or 1 can of coconut cream and 1 can of water
1 tbsp of palm sugar / maple syrup
For the red bean filling (optional, you can buy a can of sweet red beans but I find the store bought ones way too sweet):
1 cup of adzuki / small red beans, soaked overnight
3 tbsp of palm sugar, or 5 tbsp of maple syrup
Cooking Tools:
Blender
Oven
Instapot (if you’re making the red beans from scratch)
3 pie aluminum pie pan, or 2-3 square baking pans (2-3 depending on how thick you like your rice cake)
Directions :
Red Beans:
Wash and soak the red beans overnight.
Rinse the beans and add them into the instapot with 4 cups of water. Pressure cook for 20 minutes and let the instapot naturally release the pressure.
Drain the water from the instapot, add the palm sugar / maple syrup, and set the instapot to saute mode. Stir the sugar in while crushing the beans to thicken into paste. You’re done when the end result is a thick red bean paste.
Mochi cake:
Add all the ingredients into a blender/Vitamix, except for the red bean.
Blend until smooth, about 1-2 minutes.
Pour the mixture into the 3 pan.
Spoon in tablespoons full of red bean paste into the mixture. This is the sweet filling so make sure you you drop some in everywhere.
Bake at 345F for 45-60mintues depending on your oven.
Cooking Tip:
You can easily add matcha, coconut flakes, sesame into the blender as well as add it on top of the mochi right before baking to turn this into a matcha red bean mochi cake, a sesame mochi cake, or a coconut mochi cake. (as pictured)
Stay healthy with Annie:
While it is tradition to eat mochi for the lunar new year (and it’s my favorite item for sure!), I haven’t had it for years until I started to make my own. The amount of sugar added to the mochi itself, as well as the red bean paste, is alarmingly high when you buy this at the store, and it often comes with additional preservatives, food coloring, and would never be loaded with my favorite red beans either.
Rather than disperse the red beans throughout the cake, I kept them in tbsp clumps so we would get little bites of sweetness in every bite without adding sweetness to the entire cake (it’s the same thing I do with my chocolate chip cookies). So I’m also incredibly happy to be able to keep this dessert at well under 5g of sugar per serving, making it a bit more okay when I’m having my second (or third) piece.
16g of sugar per tbsp of Palm sugar x 4 = 64g, at 18-24 servings it’s 2.7-3.5g of sugar per slice.
12 g of sugar per tbsp of Maple Syrup x 6 = 72g, at 18-24 servings it’s 3-4g of sugar per slice.
One of my favorite parts about this recipe is also its simplicity in ingredients, and how easy it is to throw everything in the blender and come out with some chewy tasty mochi cakes. Happy Lunar New year and enjoy!
Sesame mochi cake with red bean (芝麻脆皮紅豆年糕)