Daifuku

A soft rice dough made in a microwave in three bursts, wrapped round bean paste while hot.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 150 g shiratamako or glutinous rice flour
• 200 ml water
• 150 g caster sugar
• 300 g anko
• 100 g potato starch, for dusting

Method

1. THREE BURSTS WITH A STIR BETWEEN EACH. The dough is cooked in a microwave in one-minute stages, beaten hard each time. Done in a single long burst the outside sets while the middle is raw, and the raw part never incorporates.
2. WRAPPED WHILE HOT, and this is the uncomfortable part: the dough is only pliable while it is almost too hot to handle. Dust your hands heavily and work fast. Cooled, it tears instead of stretching.
3. Roll the anko into 12 balls FIRST and chill them. A cold firm centre is far easier to wrap, and warm paste melts the dough from inside.
4. Whisk the flour, water and sugar smooth -- it should be like single cream, with no lumps.
5. Covered, 1 minute on full power, then beaten hard with a wet spatula. Repeat twice more.
6. After the third it should be glossy, very stiff, translucent and stretch in a long strand from the spatula. Still white and opaque means another 30 seconds.
7. Tip it onto a board dusted thickly with potato starch and dust the top as well.
8. Divide into 12 with a dusted scraper, flatten each piece into a disc thinner at the edge than the middle, a bean ball in, and gather the edges up and pinch them shut.
9. Seam DOWN, and brush the loose starch off with a dry brush -- left on it tastes chalky.
10. Eat the same day. They go hard within a day and the fridge makes it worse, not better.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes