You might know Korean rice cakes as ‘mochi’. You’ve probably tasted or seen mochi ice-cream or seen it at your local Asian grocery store. In Korean, Mochi Rice Cake is called “Chap-Ssal-Ddeok”. These are made from a rice-flour dough and filled with bean paste or a powdered nut and honey mixture.
Traditionally, rice cakes are a labor-and-time intensive process. You need to cook rice, squeeze it, mill it into powder, mix into a dough, steam and pound away at the dough.
In this video, we show you how to make a batch of ‘mochi’ rice cakes that you can make, start-to-finish, in less than fifteen minutes. Look below for a list of ingredients for shopping.
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Ingredients
(Servings: 6~8 rice cakes)
- 1 c – Glutinous rice flour or Sweet rice flour
- 2 T – sugar
- pinch of salt
- 1 c warm water
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Directions
Mochi Rice Cake Dough
- In a medium-to-large microwave-safe bowl, mix the glutinous rice flour, sugar and salt.
- Heat a cup of water, about 1-minute in the microwave. Mix about half into the bowl.
- Mix the water into powder. Slowly add more water until it flows (batter-consistency).
- Cover bowl with sheet of plastic wrap. Poke air holes into the plastic.
- Microwave on medium power for 45~60 seconds.
- Remove bowl and mix to remove clumps.
- Repeat steps 5~6 until dough is translucent. Usually 4~5 times (more or less depending on amount of ingredients and microwave power).
- Move rice cake dough to a work surface covered lightly with starch.
Forming the Mochi Rice Cake
- On your starch-covered work surface, roll the dough to cover with starch.
- Cut the dough into six-to-eight equal parts.
- Take one piece and flatten into a round shape. Work the dough from one side to the inside (filling side) to eliminate dry spots.
- Add ball of sweet red bean paste to the middle of the dough piece.
- Lightly dab water around the edges.
- Close the dough so you have a ball shape, working excess to the inside of the ball. Flatten and set aside.
Follow along in our video for the mochi rice cake method.
If you want to learn how to make other Korean desserts, visit our post on ganjeong – puffed rice snack or visit our main page at Yorihey.com.
Oh wow, this came out just like the Korean grocery’s. Amazing!!!!!
Do you have diff fillings other than red beans? Or suggestions?
Any filling will work. Try powdered or crushed walnuts with honey. You can use fruit or berries like strawberries or bananas. Or even chocolate chips.
Ice cream filling, however, is much more difficult to do by hand, since the heat of the rice cake and the heat of your hands will melt the ice cream before you can close the wrap. I hope to experiment more with making mochi ice cream at home to make an easier method.
I’m getting better now. I hope I can try mochi ice cream someday!