- Welcome to "Tell Us What You Made", the show where we each make a dish using one common ingredient or theme, then get together, compare notes, and see if we can learn anything. For this episode, Alvin, Jenn, and I each made a different
dish using an ingredient that I chose, which is mochi. And the reason I chose mochi is because I love the Q texture, I
love everything mochi. I was really curious to
see what everyone is doing with one of my favorite
foods in the world. Today, we're being
joined by Jenn Fujikawa. She's written four cookbooks and has a ton of delicious
mochi recipes on her website. Welcome, Jenn. - Hi, Inga, thanks for having me. - Thanks for joining us. Hi, Alvin too.
- Hi, Alvin. (Jenn chuckles)
- Hi. - Alvin, you're up first. Tell us what you made. - I made Hawaiian style butter mochi. Something I've always wanted to try and something that I'm very
excited to show you guys. - I saw that Jenn gave like
a little nod of approval. I feel like that's gonna
be the entire episode. We're just gonna be
like, "Is Jenn nodding?" - That sounds good to me. - As long as Jenn is happy, I'm happy. - All right. - I make butter mochi every
year for New Year's actually, so --
- [Inga] Oh! - I love butter mochi.
- Oh! Mine is not gonna be as
good as yours, but -- - I'm sure it will be.
- Immediately backtracks. - It'll be perfect. - Actually, I'm just gonna sign off. You guys can, Jenn. So the recipe I'm using I found from a woman named Alana Kysar. I apologize if I mispronounce her name, but she has a blog and her
recipe looked really good, so I decided to give it a shot. So I'm starting with mochiko flour, which is a sweet rice flour from Koda Farm that I got off of Amazon. So that's going into a
bowl with some white sugar. Yeah, guys, don't mind me just taking out, what did I even take out? I don't remember. I'm gonna pick out an unidentifiable
object from this bowl. After that, I'm adding some baking powder and some cultured salt,
giving that a whisk until all of these dry ingredients are basically no longer, oh
wow, it's going everywhere. What am I, where's my other hand? Why is my other hand not stabilizing? And then in another bowl, I'm
cracking a couple of eggs. These are some nice eggs
that I got from Vital Farms. Giving them a whisk as well. There is gonna be a lot
of whisking in this video. And followed up with some
milk and vanilla extract. So honestly, pretty simple
ingredients I would say that everybody probably
has lying around at home. I think that's also why
I was excited to make it, because it didn't need
too much extra things. - [Inga] Ooh, that looks good. - [Jenn] Yeah, that's beautiful. - [Alvin] Thank you,
so the dry ingredients now get to be friends
with the wet ingredients. She specifies that it's easy
to do with a wooden spoon to mix these two together. I didn't know, Jenn, if
you have any experience with why a wooden spoon is good, but it did work really well for me, and I really beat the crap out of it 'till no lumps were remained. - I don't know why it works, but it does. Must be like some old school thing. (everyone laughs) How they did it in the olden days. - How do you do it? - Well, I start with a whisk, because mochiko is so lumpy and if you don't get
it thoroughly combined, then you get these little white things and you don't want that
when you're serving it, which is probably what you picked out in the bowl in the beginning. So yeah, I think the wooden
spoon is probably magical. - Well, I'm so glad, 'cause
I have three of those, and I feel validated by
everything that you're saying, so thank you. But also, there's no gluten, right? So you can feel free to
really mix it, and beat it, and not have any issues
like you might have with regular flour, so I think
that's what I really enjoyed was that I could just keep
going if I wasn't sure. - [Jenn] Yeah, totally. - [Alvin] And then we've
got some coconut milk. This is kind of where the
fun starts and the butter. So this is just some unsalted
butter that I've melted. Again, the wooden spoon, like Jenn said, is a magical tool for making
butter mochi apparently. So this mixture is quite
wet, it's quite liquid-y. It's even more liquid-y
than pancake batter, so I was really surprised this
will bake up into something, so I was really excited
to kind of get it going. - [Jenn] Oh, see, look how good you are. You're sieving it. I don't even bother, because
I don't have time for that, but yours is perfection, because you take the time to sieve it. - Is it significantly better? Is it worth the effort? - It's totally worth the effort, because it, like I said,
mochiko is so lumpy and there's always little bits, so the best thing to do is to sieve it, but I don't. (laughs) - I didn't do it, 'cause
I wanted to be perfect. I did it, 'cause I knew that I probably didn't do
it right the first time -- - Don't say that! Just say it, just say that you did it, 'cause you know you're perfect. - I know I'm perfect.
- Ooh! - So that's why I sieve it. This is the kind of
support that I really need. - Damn.
- In my life. And then there's some air
bubbles that I missed, so I'm popping them with a fork, 'cause Alana said that it
helps and sort of tapping it so that you don't get any
big breakages near the top. After that, Alana said to put
some shredded coconut on top. I only decided to put it on half, because I have friends
who don't like coconut and I wanted to give this away. But I also wanted to know
what it would be like without any coconut on top. And into an oven around 350, 325 or so, and this bakes for quite a long time. It said like 60 to 70 minutes. It was such a long bake, that was crazy. - Yeah, it takes forever. - Is it like at a low temperature? - It's not actually low, it's at 350, which is pretty normal -- - Oh wow.
- For baked goods. I think it's 'cause
maybe it's so liquid-y. Jenn, I don't know if
you know what happens, but it takes so long
for it to finish baking. - Yeah, it's because it's so liquid-y and you're using like
an entire box of mochiko and then four eggs, so it takes awhile. It's almost like a super thick custard. - [Alvin] But it was like bubbly, and the butter was coming
up, and it smelled so good, and the toasted coconut. I walked out of my room
and I was like, "Oh my God, this smells amazing!" - [Jenn] Yeah, that's beautiful. - [Alvin] Thank you, and for me, I always like to put a little
finishing salt on desserts, 'cause I like salty and sweet together. It needs to cool for a long time as well. I cooled it until nighttime. There was no more sunlight into the shot. - [Inga] It is a big chunk. Maybe that's why, huh? - [Alvin] Yeah, and so this is me at night at like 11:00 P.M. when
it was finally cool, 'cause I believe Alana
said that if it's too warm and you cut it, it sticks to your knife, and this is very sticky. So I was like making sure that this was as cool as possible, nice and moist, and it was still kind
of hard to cut through, 'cause it was so soft. - Yeah, like in the
old Japanese cookbooks, they tell you specifically
to use a plastic knife. That way, it doesn't stick, because otherwise, you'll just like, cutting and pulling,
and cutting and pulling, and they come out all like weird shaped. - [Inga] So wooden spoons
and plastic knives. (Jenn laughs) - [Alvin] Yeah. - [Jenn] Magician's tools. - [Alvin] Exactly. But yeah, look at this texture! I was so surprised. - [Jenn] That looks great. - I just wanted to eat
it and I think I did, 'cause it was 11:00 and I
usually don't eat that late, but I was like, "No
way, I gotta eat this." - So was the coconut
better or the plain better? - I think they're different. I think coconut gives
you different flavor. I just really loved how the butter that kind of bubbled on the surface kind of toasted and
like fried the coconut. I would say the coconut one is like the friend that
you really like to go out and drink with and party with. But the one without the coconut is maybe like your best friend where even though you're not
doing crazy stuff all the time, you always have a good
time hanging out with them. - That's a good description. - But some people don't like coconut, so this is the bounty. This is the pile of
butter mochi that I made. Jenn, what do you think I have to know? - That looks great,
that looks really good. Like I said, I make it
for New Year's every year, and people love it, because
you can just grab it, and eat it, and it's sweet. And like you said, it's
kind of hefty I think too. It's really filling, so even
a small square makes you feel completely full, but yours is beautiful. It looks great.
- Thanks. I had like six that night. Maybe that's why I woke up
next day feeling very bloated. - Possibly. - All right, that was my mochi recipe. Jenn, I think you're up next. Please tell us what you made. - I made a Neapolitan mochi bundt cake with three layers and colors. And the funny thing is
in watching your recipe, mine is very similar. It's almost like a butter mochi base, but it has a little bit
of extra ingredients to make it more like hearty-ish I guess, 'cause it's in a bundt
form, but it's pretty close. - I've never heard those three
words in the same sentence. Neapolitan, mochi, and bundt.
- Yeah. - Every New Year's, I throw a huge Oshogatsu New Year's Day party, and like 30 to 40 family
members come over, and I cook for three days, and I make 20 to 25 dishes by myself. And then part of that is
this almost mochi buffet that I make, so I make daifuku mochi, I make butter mochi. I was trying to think of
things that I could make to like cut up for
potluck style party foods, so this is what I came up with. Also it's really colorful
and very Instagram worthy, so people like it. - Can Inga and I could
go to this party one day? - Yeah, I was like --
- Of course. - How do I snag an invite? - Yeah, totally. It's like an open house. People just come in and out all day. So like Alvin's recipe, I also started out with --
- [Inga] It's the same shot! - Of Koda Farm's mochiko. They make the best mochiko honestly, so and you should really sift this before you throw it in
the bowl, but again, I'm not as good as Alvin. I just dump it in, so.
(Alvin laughs) And then I added some
baking powder and salt, and I whisked it all together to try and get the lumps out. Doesn't always work. And there's also sugar in
there by the way, I forgot, so there's sugar, mochiko,
baking powder, and salt. And then a can of evaporated milk. I feel like all baked mochi recipes go together well with evaporated milk. And then butter, always butter. I think the difference between mine and the butter mochi one
is there's more butter, which is always a good thing. - [Inga] Oh my lord, no, that was egg. - Yeah, four eggs. (everyone laughs) - I was like, "More butter!" - No butter on butter. Four eggs and then I beat the eggs before I put them in, so again, it kind of like all comes
together pretty quickly. And this is a really good one bowl recipe if you didn't add that Neapolitan layer. You could just mix it all together and throw it in a bundt
pan and be done with it. But to make it extra fancy, we're gonna split it up, you'll see. And then vanilla. - [Alvin] Wait, that spoon's not wooden! - [Inga] Yeah, I was just gonna say, wooden spoon, no? - [Jenn] (laughs) Well, see, that's why mine's not as good as yours, because I didn't use a wooden spoon. - [Alvin] Don't say that. - I used what I had next to me. So the part that I guess
I didn't show here is then after I did that, I split
the batter into three bowls. That's how you're gonna get
the three different colors. So one bowl, you just kinda leave plain. You can see it in the
background in the blue bowl. And then two of the
bowls, in the first bowl, I added cocoa powder and chocolate chips. So this is gonna be like
the chocolate-y layer. - [Inga And Alvin] Whoa. - And I used mini chocolate chips, so you really get a lot of
chocolate in that layer. And again, I didn't use a wooden spoon. What happened? (Inga and Alvin laughs) What am I thinking? (Inga and Alvin laughs) So you have the brown
layer, the chocolate layer, the plain vanilla layer,
and then the pink, and that's where it gets
really bright and colorful. I used gel dye, so it
doesn't dilute the batter, and I used a bright pink. It looks a little red, but
when it bakes out, you'll see. It's pretty bright. So now you have three bowls of batter. So you can see this is my
really old, beat-up bundt pan. It's the only one that works really well. I bought a lot of nice,
like expensive new ones, and none of them are as good
as my mom or my grandma's. I don't even know whose
this is at releasing cakes, so I always keep using
this particular bundt pan. And so then you put in
your different layers. So the first layer is the chocolate layer that has the cocoa and
the chocolate chips. And then I put the vanilla layer and just kinda shake it out. Like you were saying, Alvin, to tap it to get the bubbles out is a good thing. But then for this one, you
don't wanna tap too much, because you wanna make
sure the layers are even. - [Alvin] Mm. - So this is the plain layer going around and I just kinda cover up
the bottom one haphazardly. And then I add the pink
layer on top. (laughs) Watching this in speed makes me think, "Oh my gosh, I should be more careful." But it tastes good in the
end, it doesn't matter. - Exactly. - [Jenn] You bake this for an hour at 350. Similarly, it takes a really long time, but the fact that it's in a bundt helps, because the middle in
there dissipates the heat, so it comes out a little bit
faster than the butter mochi. So it looks like a normal bundt, but when you cut it, that's
where the surprise comes. So I think that's why
people like it at parties. - [Inga] Whoo, right! - And it has that same
sort of chewy consistency. That's what I like is like mochi, but it's almost like a pound cake too, because it has butter,
and sugar, and eggs, and it's totally gluten free. I think that's the other thing too is a lot of baked mochi cake
recipes include flour, but I wanted to make something
that was totally gluten free, especially 'cause it's a
party food, and I didn't, if people have allergies or whatever. - That's so cool, it's beautiful! - The texture, is it more
similar to a pound cake or is it more similar to a butter mochi, or just something in between? - It's kind of like a hybrid. It's chewy, but it has that same sort of feeling of a pound cake. - I'm imagining that it's
like probably very dense. - It is very dense, but I think the eggs and the butter kind of
elevate it a little bit, so you do feel like you're
just eating a slice of cake. And you can change the colors up. - Matcha and chocolate!
- Yeah. - That's what I would do, yeah. - That looks incredible. - So that was my Neapolitan mochi bundt. And now, Inga, tell us what you made. - I made mochi puff pastry. - What? - It literally is just, wait,
I shouldn't give it away yet. But like think of the
simplest thing you could do. Mochi puff pastry, that's what I did. - How is that simple? - I will admit something. I have to confess something. When I suggested mochi to Adam
and Liza for this episode, I was just like, "Oh,
everyone has a mochi block, and what would you do
with the mochi block?" That's kind of my original idea. So now I'm like, "Dang,
y'all went like all out." And I'm like, "Well, you know, I just." Anyways, you'll see. So mochi puff pastry is
essentially puff pastry wrapped around mochi. This is an idea that my mom
has been encouraging me to do. Back home like in Hong Kong, there's like a thing right now
to wrap puff pastry around, actually specifically,
it's rice dumplings, like the Chinese tangyuan. It's not mochi, but they're
both made of glutinous rice. I feel really bad, 'cause I feel like I barely did anything this time. - Jenn, for context,
Inga in these episodes usually brings out the most crazy, wacky, wild, extravagant recipes. So even though she's saying she didn't really do a lot of work, that's definitely not gonna be true. - Okay, well, here we go. As you can see, these are my ingredients. You really just need two things. Even though you see a lot of here, that's because I just
went to the grocery store and bought every single
flavor pretty much. I just wanted to see which one
was the tastiest, you know? - [Alvin] There's a boba one? - [Inga] Yup!
- Ooh, that sounds good. - [Inga] And then just
some classic puff pastry, so all you need to do for this is just defrost your puff pastry, roll it out, and then essentially what I'm going to do is just cutting it into square shapes. I know you can get like
real fancy with it, like if you want, you
can do different designs. I'm just doing plain 'ol squares. And then I just grabbed
my rice ball tangyuan and literally just wrapped it around here. It's like super simple. - [Alvin] Damn, you weren't kidding. - I'm so sorry, Jenn. This is not how I wanted
to be introduced to you. - It looks good. It looks like a little,
snuggley blanket of pastry. - [Inga] But the thing is, right, this is a hack that my mom has told me about for a long time. I really want to give it a try. And then I'm just brushing
a layer of egg yolk on top to make it shiny. And actually, so my mom
encouraged me to use the air fryer for this, which is why I
chose to do that method instead of baking it or other ways. And it's actually super straightforward. - [Jenn] That's cool. - [Inga] Three ingredients, right? And then put it in, eight
minutes at 350 I believe, and then basically air fryer done, and you can see that
that's what it looks like. It's just like a little -- - [Alvin] Whoa.
- [Jenn] Ooh. - [Inga] Beautiful ball
of golden butteriness. - [Jenn] It looks little dim sum. - Yeah, right?
- Yeah! - You can see that when you cut it open, you see you get that like melty center and you get the thin layer
of glutinous rice around it. That's kind of what it
looks like on the inside and I was just really excited. It was also very hot when I cut into it. Not shown is me burning my tongue. So basically that's what I did with all of these flavors you see here. This is why I say I'm so extra. I literally just picked
one flavor from each pack and then did the same
thing for all of them. My little army of tangyuans. - [Jenn] You should've marked each one, so you know what's in there, like how they do on dim sum. - [Inga] I know, that's
what I should've done! That's what I should've done. Cut out a little puff pastry and like mark it that way, yeah. It's just a little pile of puff pastries and I believe I cut them all open. Yeah, look at that!
- [Alvin And Jenn] Wow! - [Jenn] That's cool.
- Like I think this is such like a fun sort of like party platter situation you can easily make, right, for friends. I know mochi roulette was like a thing, but it could kind of be like that where it's like which
one are you gonna get? - And then if you really wanna be mean, you can put one with like --
- [Inga And Alvin] Wasabi. - Yeah.
- Or just like a shallot. - [Inga] Yeah, but you can see
like each layer there, right? Like kind of the filling and how it gets all melty, but -- - [Alvin] You know what it looks like? It looks like a scotch egg. - [Inga] Yes!
- [Jenn] Mm. - Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It does look like a scotch egg. - [Jenn] A sweet scotch egg. (Inga laughs) - I was like, "Okay, I have
to do this with a mochi." So I bought, this mochi I bought was from Cha-An Bonbon here in New York. They make their mochi from scratch. I just wanted to see
what it would be like. As you can see, it's
obviously much bigger. But oh my gosh, this
one was like way better than the tangyuans in my opinion, because there's less sugar
in the glutinous rice layer whereas for mochi, I think
the sweetness was just enough. So then when I bit into it,
it was chewy, and sweet, and it was just like perfect. Like this one I actually finished
the entire thing so fast. The other ones I think it like
kinda gets a little harder, but this one was perfect. - Japanese bakeries,
they sell these breads that are studded with like
mochi, and bean, and stuff, and it's like you made
your own, that's amazing. - Super easy way to make it. Everybody can do this. I was like so proud to tell my mom. I sent her pictures. I was like, "Look, I finally did it!" Basically all of these
I did in the air fryer and I think the air fryer is just like, it makes thing so convenient. I'm curious to see what it
would be like in the oven. - Jenn, wouldn't you agree
that I had the two boxes of those mochiko flour,
and I just found myself wanting to make so many things, so that naturally, not even for a video, just like I made mochi brownies. I found a recipe for like
Japanese style butter mochi. I think it's different, I don't know. It's so fun to play with it, and everybody likes it, and it's chewy. Do you ever get that
feeling at your parties, it's just there's something
about it that's really special? - Totally. I always try and change up things too, so people don't get bored of it. So like that butter mochi recipe, I changed out the sugar for brown sugar, and it gives it more
of like caramel flavor, so I made this brown sugar mochi. And like you said, you have this box, and you just wanna keep using it. So I make mochi cornbread and I do a lot of savory stuff too. I use the mochiko to make fried chicken. - Yeah!
- Yes! Yes, yes, yes.
- Mochiko chicken! - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Wait, can I show you
the thing that I made? I have it in the fridge, 'cause I've been snacking on it. - Is it butter mochi? - Okay, so this is a method that I found where you take the mochiko and
you mix it with brown sugar. I did brown butter, 'cause
I love brown butter, and milk, and then you
do the microwave method. And then I used a hand mixer to do it, 'cause I didn't wanna like kill my hands. It was a very like you cook it, and cook it until it's a
paste, and you let it chill. I heard that this is a
different style of butter mochi. It's not, I just made this
and I wanted you to see it. - Did you like that one better
or the butter mochi better? - You know how I said the
one without the coconut was like kinda subtle and
like your best friend? Well, this one is even more subtle and it's like your childhood
friend from like 20 years ago. - All your friends are mochi. - All my friends are mochi. - So that was our mochi episode. We had Alvin's Hawaiian butter mochi. We had Jenn's Neapolitian bundt cake. And then, we also had
my pastry wrapped mochi. Have you made anything
recently with mochi? If so, tell us what you made. Thank you, Jenn, so much
for joining us again and giving us your expert advice. - Thanks so much, it was so fun, and I'm definitely gonna
make both of the things that you guys made.
(Inga laughs) - Tell us what you think please. - [Jenn] I'm gonna find
my wooden spoon too. I'm gonna work with that too. - [Inga] I definitely wanna
try your bundt cake for sure. I think that just like the
layer thing is just so cool. I've never even thought
about doing that before. - [Jenn] Yeah, I like your idea of using matcha too for a layer. That's really gonna be good. - [Inga] All right, it's
gonna happen, you guys. It's gonna happen.
