Mochi Ice Cream!

As a continuation of my love of Asian food, I couldn't resist making some cute iced mochi! I always thought mochi were really difficult to make, as I never knew how they got that ball of rice dough so round with no visible seams. But then I randomly came across a video for it on YouTube, and was surprised by how easy it could be! I took this recipe as my base, and made green tea-flavoured mochi. If you are not that experienced with Asian cooking, and need a clear explanation in English, this blog post is for you!

Ingredients
• ¾ cup shiratamako (100 g) or Mochiko/sweet rice flour (115 g) (I'm not sure what the difference is between the two, and I just went to my local Asian supermarket and bought something with "glutinous rice flour" (糯米粉) or something like that, and it was just fine)
• ¾ cup (180 ml) water
• ¼ cup icing sugar (required to keep the mochi dough soft at the low temperatures)
• 2 heaped teaspoons of green tea or matcha powder)
• ½ cup (100 g) potato starch/corn starch (in the UK, we have corn starch, and this worked great)
• Ice cream of your choice (I used my green tea ice cream)

1. Take out your ice cream, and when it gets to scoopable temperature, measure out scoops that will go into the mochi using an ice cream scoop or spoon. In the recipe I followed, they suggested separating the scoops into muffin cases, but I thought this was a waste of muffin cases, so I put them into squares of aluminium foil that I cut from the roll. Put them into the freezer for 30 mins to 2 hours, or until frozen solid. 

2. Combine the glutinous rice flour, icing sugar and matcha powder in a bowl and mix well.

3. Add water and mix with the rice and sugar. 
4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and heat in the microwave at a high heat for 1 minute
5. Take it out and stir with a wet silicone spatula, then heat again for another 30 seconds to finish the cooking. At this point the mixture will look absolutely revolting! It will look like a green lumpy mess that nobody would want to touch - but stick with it, it gets better!

6. Dust some corn flour (or in America potato/corn starch) on your work surface. DO NOT be tempted to dust your work surface with icing sugar (like I was), because the condensation from the hot mochi dough will combine to create a sticky mess! It has to be the starch/flour only. Don't use the rice flour either, because its quite gritty when raw, so it wont leave a very nice finish. Scoop out the cooked mochi dough onto your dusted work surface in one lump, and work into a smooth ball:

7. In order to prevent it sticking to your rolling pin, dust the top of your dough too. Then you can start rolling it out until it is flat and about the size of a baking sheet. Leave it until its cool either on your work top, or in the fridge if you want to speed up the process. Don't be tempted to work with it while its too warm, as the ice cream could melt! 

8. Once cool, cut out circles from the mochi dough using a 10 - 11 cm cookie cutter (roughly 4.5 inches). This sounds quite large, but you need the size to wrap all the way around the ice scream scoop. Dust the cookie cutter in corn starch if it gets too sticky.

9. Prepare a piece of clingfilm (cling wrap) and dust off any remaining corn starch with a pastry brush from one of the circles. Place on top of the clingfilm on a plate. Pile up alternating layers of clingfilm and circle cookie dough, so that they are all ready for when you come to put the mochi together. Believe it or not, you can re-roll the remaining bits of in-between dough, and roll it out again, to make more mochi wrappers. It can be quite difficult though, and make sure you dust off all the cornstarch first. Slightly dampening the dough first helps as well.
10. Now comes the tricky part - assembly of the mochi balls. Take one piece of plastic wrap with the mochi dough circle on top and lay it on your work surface. Take out one ice cream scoop, and lay in the middle of the circle. 
11. Bring up the corners and press them together to make a seal. Quickly wrap up with the clingfilm, and twist up the end to secure. Place back in the freezer as soon as possible. Repeat this process with each ice cream scoop one at a time (don't try to do more than one at once, because the ice cream will start to melt!). 
12. Leave the mochi in the freezer for a few hours, but leave out at room temperature for 5 - 10 minutes before serving.