Mochi Cake with Strawberries

Mochi Cake with Strawberries

I love asian pastries. Just love them but have never had the nerve to dig into baking them. “Let the experts”…. I would tell myself. Until of course this Chinese New Year. I had purchased some lovely rice flour (or SO I Had Thought) and was ready to jump off the high dive. Well, I did jump off the high dive, I just didn’t land into a mouth resisting, gooey, spongy rice cake.

This recipe was very simple. Not sure why they used evaporated milk, but for once I followed the instructions. I am going to make a lot of these kinds of pastries until I get this texture right. We don’t know how long that it will take me, but I am sure going to have fun while doing it!

Found this recipe on Tastespotting, and you can see Jasmine’s cakes look much more spongy and sticky. Mine were very good but very crumbly. ;-)

By Jasmine Cuisine’s blog

Ingredients:

The Batter

3 cups of glutinous rice flour

3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 cup evaporated milk

3 eggs

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries

Preheat oven to 350˚ .

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add the evaporated milk and mix until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add rice flour, baking powder and vanilla and beat until well blended. Fold in the strawberries with a wooden spoon.

Cake

Pour batter into a well greased 13″ x 9″ square  baking pan.  Bake for 30 minutes or until surface is golden and cake springs back to touch it.

Let cake cool completely before cutting and serving, so that the glutinous rice flour is well taken.

MY NOTES: Hmmmmm. Did I mix up the flours and use corn flour by accident? Did I accidentally mark my flour’s wrong. I am not sure, but whatever I ended up baking was not the effect I was going for with an oooey and goooey kind of cake. It’s a good cake for sure, but it’s not the texture I was longing for. That aside, I will try this recipe again in the event I marked my flour bags wrong or had rice flour but not Glutinous rice flour. But it was still very tasty, and that oven of mine…….may be cooking them a little too hot. Need to get a thermometer in there.

Not sure, but those are my two best guesses. And though I turned the oven down to 325˚, could have probably just cooked for 20 minutes and then started checking. Now we are on the search for the perfect Chinese New Years cake.

Go on, make it a great year of the Rabbit!

Bon Appétit!