Peanut Butter Mochi, that’s my Jam
My cookbook addiction continues unabated. One of my new favorites is A Common Table by Cynthia Chen McTernan. It’s a beautiful cookbook filled with not only mouthwatering photographs of her food but wonderful stories about her family and friends. Her recipes are approachable and her writing inviting. In contrast to the cookbooks of yesteryear, today’s cookbooks, like A Common Table, breathe life, warmth, and a personal connection into each recipe. It makes me want to call my Mom, my kids, my aunties and uncles and say, “Hey, come on over we gonna cook, eat, and talk story”.
Have You Eaten Yet? (code for I ❤️ you)
This is not a cookbook that strives to teach one to cook, it’s more like a series of love letters, first and foremost to her family and friends, and then to all of us. Her soulful, homey food reflects her southern upbringing, her Chinese heritage, her hubby’s Hawaiian-Korean-Irish roots, and their lives together. These are recipes I imagine are passed down from grandmother to mother and mother to daughter. Each generation adding its own personal stamp.
Two Red Bowls is Cynthia’s blog, ground zero for her food and family tales. She has managed to juggle a toddler, a newborn, a blog, and a book, no small feat. Wow!
Onto her delicious food. Needing a gluten-free dessert to bring to a potluck, I instantly thought of the peanut butter mochi in her book. Mochi, made of glutinous rice flour, is chewy, dense, and all the craze right now. Imagine a marshmallow but dense, chewy, and only slightly sweet. Mallows on roids. To top it off, soooo easy to make. Literally, one bowl plus a wooden spoon. The addition of peanut butter brings a familiar flavor and texture to the mochi, a great intro for the uninitiated. Did I mention GLUTEN FREE?
The gold standard for rice flour and readily available is Koda Farms Blue Star Mochiko. Ground into a fine powder, it blends quickly and is easy to work with. Throw the flour, sugar, eggs, and milk in a bowl. Stir, don’t worry about overmixing (no gluten), pour, and bake. The batter will resemble a thick, elastic pancake batter.
Plop the peanut butter evenly into the batter so that everyone gets a bite of peanut butter, and then it’s oven time. Midway through baking, sprinkle crushed peanuts on top. Next time I am thinking of using honey-roasted peanuts, to really accentuate the play on sweet and salty. The batter will puff while baking, not to worry, it will flatten as the mochi is cooling.
Once it has cooled a bit, dig in, warm mochi is yummy. I cut mine into squares and then further divided half of the squares into rectangular bars. Just so delicious, the combo of chewy mochi, pockets of oozy soft peanut butter, and the crunchy peanut topping-the trifecta of yum. It’s hard to resist and eat just one. It’s dense in texture and calories but so worth it!
I think you could make this milk-free by using coconut milk in place of milk. I have yet to try it. Andrea Nguyen, Asian cookbook author extraordinaire created a riff by adding black sesame paste, Black Sesame Peanut Butter Mochi, which looks delish, I am so going to make her version soon.
Peanut Butter Mochi
Ingredients
Filling
- 6 Tbsp Peanut butter Natural, creamy or chunky
- 2 Tbsp Powdered sugar
Cake
- 1-1/2 Cups Sweet rice flour 225gm
- 3/4 Cup Granulated sugar
- 1/8 Tsp Salt
- 1 Cup Whole milk
- 1/2 Cup Vegetable oil
- 2 Eggs
- 1 Tsp Vanilla
- 1/2 Cup Roasted peanuts Or substitute honey roasted peanuts
- 1 Tbsp Brown sugar Optional, to be added to plain roasted peanuts,
Instructions
- For the peanut butter filling, whisk together the peanut butter and confectioner’s sugar until smooth. Set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line an 8-inch square baking dish with parchment paper, letting the paper go up the sides so you can easily lift the cake out later on.
- In a medium bowl, combine the sweet rice flour, sugar, milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla, whisk until smooth. Don’t worry about overworking the batter when making the cake, sweet rice flour is GLUTEN FREE.
- Pour half the batter into the prepared baking dish. Used 2 small spoons or small teaspoon ice cream scoop to drop spoonfuls of the filling evenly across the batter, then pour the remaining batter over the filling. Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
- While the mochi is baking, place the peanuts in a food processor or blender and pulse until finely chopped. Remove the mochi cake from the oven, sprinkle of the crushed peanuts across the top. The cake maybe puffy so spread nuts as evenly as you can. The cake will fall as it cools.
- Return the cake to the oven and bake until the center bounces back when pressed, an additional 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool about 20 minutes before trying to lift the parchment paper to remove the cake from the pan.
- Enjoy warm or at room temperature. The mochi slices cleanly when cool, but is delish warm.
- Store in an airtight container and keep at room temp if cool, or refrigerate. Microwave pieces on high with 15-second blasts to refresh.