Daifuku is a sweet mochiko rice flour ball stuffed with something sweet.  Sweet black sesame paste is my favorite but I won’t turn down sweet red beans either.  I grew up eating this Japanese treat in Hawaii, but I made it for the first time this summer at Brooklyn Apple Academy’s Run a Luncheonette Cooking Camp.  I like to throw in at least one project each summer where I am learning how to do it at the same time as the kids.  Last year it was homemade ricotta.  This year it was daifuku!

It was much easier to make than I expected and the boys did a great job making dozens of daifuku without much help from me at all.  They made daifuku filled with red bean paste for the Luncheonette.  Later in the summer, I made daifuku stuffed with black sesame paste.  

DAIFUKU

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 cup Mochiko flour
• potato starch and/ or black sesame seeds for dusting
• tsubushian or black sesame paste
• potato starch or black sesame

1. Dissolve the sugar into boiling water.  In  a large bowl, pour the sugar water into the mochicko flour and mix well.  Pour the dough in to steamer lined with damp cheesecloth and place steamer over in a pot filled with simmering water.  Cover and steam 25 minutes.
2. Pour the steamed dough onto a work surface dusted lightly with potato starch.  Let the dough cool for five minutes.
3. Shape the dough into nine balls.For back sesame daifuku, I found it easiest to drop the ball of dough into the sesame seeds. Flatten the ball into a disk.  Place a spoonful of black sesame paste in the center of the disk, then pinch the dumpling closed and roll the other side in sesame.
   

   

   

   

For red bean daifuku, flatten the balls into disks on the potato starch dusted work surface.  Place a spoonful of red bean paste in the center of the disk, then pinch the dumpling closed and roll the other side in potato starch.

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