Azuki Bean Mochiko Cupcakes

I had some leftover sweetened canned azuki bean paste in the fridge that I would hate to see go to waste, so I made some cupcakes- Asian style. Instead of regular flour, this was made with rice flour, specifically Mochiko flour. I can usually find this at our local Asian grocery stores. These cupcakes are like a blend of mochi and cupcakes made with regular flour in the mouth. They are a bit on the chewy side. The dallop of sweetened azuki bean paste in the center is bliss. I couldn't resist them when they were still warm... a few minutes out of the oven.

1/2 box of Mochiko rice flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup powder sugar
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder
azuki bean paste

Mix the eggs, rice flour, oil, powder sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and baking powder together. Grease muffin pan. (I used aluminum cupcake liners and greased them. Avoid paper liners if you want to use any liners. Cupcakes will stick to the paper liners.) Fill each cup with 2/3 of batter, spoon in a dallop of azuki bean paste, then top with 1/3 of batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Check to see if they're done with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, then they're done.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

Japanese Confectionery from Minamoto Kitchoan

A friend recently introduced me to wagashi from Minamoto Kitchoan. I must say, Japanese know how to package everything so beautifully. The sweets came in this pretty box. As with most Asian desserts, these are suppose to be "healthy" and not so heavy.


Everything inside were beautifully wrapped. I almost felt bad eating them. The one on the left is a lightly-sweetened jelly with a cherry in the middle. The one on the right is strawberry/red bean jelly.

This is what the cherry jelly looked like when you open up the pretty packaging:


And finally, there were some chocolate mochi in the box...


This is probably the best east-meets-west dessert I have had recently. I savored every single one of them. The mochi "skin" was soft while the chocolate filling inside melt slowly in the mouth, sort of like a chocolate truffle. This is a perfect solution to when I desperately need a chocolate fix.