Swath of destruction!

mochimonkey  wins. She has more patience than I. She makes more beautiful mochi than I. She is, unsurprisingly, more Japanese than me. (Bows, forehead to flour speckled kitchen floor.)

Granted, I have to work in an apartment sized kitchen with stuff staged on an ironing board, but geez. There's potato starch everywhere. There's potato starch everywhere because mochi sticks to EVERYTHING. You should've seen the state of my non-stick pot.

I made up the mochi per her instructions here. The part she doesn't tell you: the rice flour-sugar water mixture goes doughy very fast, so drop the heat down in your pot fast! Five minutes stirring is plenty. In fact, I kind of wished it wasn't too hot to work with my hands like other doughs because doing it with a wooden spoon took longer to mix thoroughly. Also, it's ok to add a little water if the dough gets too dry. (Most cooks/bakers know this already, but novices may not.)

Previous experience making onigiri meant I know how hot is too hot to handle and honestly, temperature was less of a problem than keeping my hands floured up enough to work the dough.

I split the resulting dough into three smaller wads. One got filled messily with the red bean paste, which has had two nights to set up beautifully in the fridge. Wasn't too gooey and was relatively easy to handle. The red bean mochi got dusted with a little kinako (soy bean flour) which imparts a nice nutty flavor.

The shiro an has only been in the fridge one night and was still a bit wet. Next time I may do the old ziplock pastry tube bit if this is the case but guess who is out of ziplock bags? This batch got some toasted sesame seeds sprinkled over it.

The third went back into the saucepan with a squirt of food coloring and three or four tablespoons of ladycelia's rosepetal syrup. This, of course, made the dough very wet. I starched up my hands and worked it with my fingers, but it never quite got as dry as the other. Realizing it would be even more of a PITA to put filling in, I just rolled this stuff into balls. It smells sufficiently rosy.

Helluva lot of work for not a lot of mochi, all told, and not terribly pretty mochi at that. On the other hand, I have no idea how many people attending the event even like mochi. It'll taste fine (there were two duds that would not hold together that ended up being taste tested), just found it a bit frustrating.

So I'm going to finish getting dressed, print out the directions to the event site, take my mochi down to the car and hit 99 Ranch for some fresh fruit and a couple packages of dorayaki to supplement my mochi.

(Will I make it again? Gotta do SOMETHING with all that bean paste....)