Red Bean Mochi Recipe: How to make Daifuku

Red bean mochi is a sweet Japanese confection that has grown in popularity in many countries outside Japan. With its supple rice cake layer that wraps around a bean paste with intense sweetness, this snack will certainly remain in your memory once you try it.

Jump to:

• What is red bean mochi?
• Red Bean Mochi Ingredients
• Red Bean Mochi Recipe (Daifuku)
• Cooking Tips
• How to store
• How should red bean mochi taste?
• How to eat red bean mochi
• Auspicious Meaning
• Calories

What is red bean mochi?

Red bean Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made from short-grain glutinous rice (‘mochigome’). The Japanese also refer to these rice cakes as ‘wagashi’, which translates to confection, or as ‘daifuku’, which literally translates to ‘great luck’.

Traditional wagashi-making starts with soaking and then steaming polished glutinous rice. After pounding the rice into a sticky paste, it is moulded into a ball and stuffed with different fillings. Sweetened red bean paste is one common filling, and white bean paste is another popular filling. 

We can also find red bean mochi cakes and ice cream sold in some stores. Baked with mochiko (rice flour) and red bean paste, Chinese and Korean cookbooks reference the dessert as well, a nod to the cross-cultural histories of these countries. The cake has a chewy texture, unlike the smoothness of the daifuku. 

Red Bean Mochi Ingredients

While the first step of daifuku used to be pounding the rice, thankfully, modern convenience means you can buy sweet, short-grained, glutinous rice flour that has already been pounded to make red bean mochi.

The coarse-grained rice flour is known as Shiratamako and the fine-grained one is called Mochiko flour. If you have a Daiso outlet (Japanese store) in your area, you should also be able to find mochi rice flour, sometimes known as Daifukuko.  

However, if you cannot find either, then substitute it with regular glutinous rice flour. 

For the filling, dried azuki beans bought at the supermarket can make red bean paste. It is also possible to buy red bean paste from most supermarkets. 

Homemade red bean paste tastes better though, as you can control the amount of saltiness and sweetness that goes into the paste.

While we focus on red bean mochi here, feel free to experiment with different fillings that you may like such green tea, peanut, taro and more. You can still use glutinous rice flour to create the exterior for wrapping around your preferred filling. In this article, we will not be making the paste. 

However, if you’re interested to make your own homemade red bean paste, have a read of our detailed recipe. The paste can be made used not only to make Japanese daifuku but also Chinese snow skin mooncakes and pastries too.

Cooking Tips

Before attempting to make your first red bean mochi, here are some tips to heed. 

• First, rice flour is very sticky and so when kneading or pounding the rice flour, make sure your hands are slightly wet. When you are trying to shape the dough, your hands must be dry and dusted with starch. But when you have stuffed the filling, brush the excess starch away to close the ball. 
• Second, rolling out the dough rather than stretching it too much by hand is better. Try not to pull the flour when shaping it into a ball or you’ll create a sticky surface.
• Lastly, when you cook the rice flour, it should slowly fade to a more translucent cream colour, which shows it is well-cooked. The skin of the red bean mochi should appear thin and tender. 
• Here’s one more tip, not for cooking but for easy washing up. Soak any tools used in water. That way, the rice flour will not stick to the surface and lessens your washing up.

How to store

To store the dessert, put red bean mochi in an airtight container, and place it in a cool, dry place. Do not make it too cold or the rice will get hard. In this cool, dry state, it can last for about a month. 

If you would like to store it longer in a fridge, then add sugar. The recommendation is to use 50-100 grams of sugar for 100 grams of cooked rice flour, to help the confection store longer and stay soft. 

If placed in the freezer in a sealed container, the rice cakes can stay fresh for at least six months.

How should red bean mochi taste?

Following our recipe, it will taste smooth yet slightly gummy. It has a chewy texture. Once you have bitten through the outer layer, it rewards you with sugary, melt-in-your-mouth azuki (Japanese for red bean) bean paste. The overall sensation is a ball of sweet, slightly sticky confection.

How to eat red bean mochi

As the Japanese confection is slightly sticky, we should cut it into thumb-sized pieces for easy chewing. When eaten alone, it is best served with green tea to help with swallowing. 

We can also serve daifuku with red bean soup. A traditional Japanese dessert known as Zenzai, red bean soup is boiled fresh with red beans, sugar, and salt. Mochi is grilled to make it crispy and toasty, before being dunked in the warm soup.

Red bean mochi is sometimes also served as a topping in Japan for miso soup and udon soup. This flavourful combination allows you to enjoy both sweet and savoury in this way. 

Another way to eat daifuku is to make rice crackers by toasting the sweet confection until it is dry and warm, serving with soy sauce. 

Auspicious Meaning

The auspicious-sounding names explain why daifuku is usually dyed in pretty pale colours such as pink, yellow, or green, and are made specially to celebrate specific Japanese festivals. The tradition of eating wagashi came about 700 years ago in Japan. 

It was originally used to worship the gods, then later divided into smaller pieces to distribute amongst worshippers. During the Heian period, the Japanese started eating it as part of the New Year festivities.

Take, for instance, the Sakura daifuku with a salted Sakura leaf wrapped around it. It has a lumpier texture compared to red bean mochi as some grains are left uncooked.  The wagashi is eaten during the Hinamatsuri (Girl’s Day) festival and enjoyed throughout spring. 

Another type of rice cake popular in Western Japan is warabi mochi. This dessert has a soft, jelly-like texture since it is made with plant starch. During summer, they eat it with brown sugar syrup or soybean flour. Unlike red bean mochi, the rice cake itself is tasteless. 

Confectionary Evolution

The pounding of rice flour is a highly revered skill in Japan, with masters in high demand, especially near New Year. There is also a wide variety of this confection, with different types for different festivities. With more people around the world that appreciate Japanese culture, daifuku has become less of a festive special and more of a tea-time favourite. 

What is new and popular among ice cream lovers is red bean mochi ice cream. Essentially still a round and softball, the inner filling is cold red bean ice cream. It is a cool treat for a hot day as you bite into the wagashi, to be rewarded with a freezing burst of sweet ice cream.

Calories

For our recipe, one piece of red bean mochi the size of a baby’s thumb is about 60 calories. However, the calorie count will be different depending on the size and the amount of sugar you add to the paste filling.

Red bean mochi is a suitable dessert after lunch or dinner. When eaten cold in the summer, it helps one stay refreshed. With some hot soup, it is also a perfect light, sweet treat. Indeed, it is a versatile, all-weather dessert for those who crave sweets. 

Now that you have learned how to make it try making this cute Japanese dessert. Subscribe to us on YouTube to see more ways to use glutinous rice flour at home.