So, here’s a thing I make at work a couple of times a week as a petit four. Consider them Rice Krispie Treats, perfected. They started out as these. Then they evolved.

That's as good as the photos get these days, folks.

Dirty Rice Krispie Treats

1. 2.75 oz. unsalted butter
2. Large pinch Kosher salt
3. 15 oz. marshmallows
4. 9 oz. Rice Krispies (or generic puffed rice cereal)
5. 4.5 oz. cocoa nibs

Place the butter and salt in a large-ish pot, something with a wide bottom. Heat over medium until butter melts and begins to brown, stirring occasionally. Cook the butter to a dark brown (not black).

While the butter browns, spread the marshmallows in a single layer in a large mixing bowl or on a clean baking sheet. Torch the heck out of ‘em. You could also put them under a broiler if you have no torch, but a torch is really the way to go here. You want a burnt, black, crispy shell on at least 2 sides of those marshmallows. With gooey insides. Once the butter and marshmallows are done, turn the heat down to medium-low and add the marshmallows. Stir occasionally with a buttered heat-proof spatula until completely melted.

SUPER DANGEROUS ACTION SHOT

Combine the cereal and cocoa nibs in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Butter a medium rectangular baking dish (or a half sheet pan, if you’re in a professional kitchen…I cut them 1×1.5″ for petit fours so they don’t need to be that thick, but they’d be too thick to fit a quarter sheet) and line it with parchment. Liberally butter the parchment. Butter, butter, butter. Once the awesomely burnt goo in the pot is totally melted, add the cereal and nibs and stir to combine as evenly as possible. Scrape into your buttered vessel and smooth evenly. At work I use a liberally buttered large offset spatula. If you’re into cake decorating you’ll have one. If not…use whatever a home cook would use to spread and smoosh Rice Krispie Treats. I don’t know. After this, I butter another sheet of parchment and lay it on top, then wrap and let it set up for a few hours. Then I turn that sucker out and cut it up with a buttered knife.

Not sure what the next post will be. Banana jam? Toasted almond milk? How to make lame-ass cultivated blueberries taste like wild ones? Perhaps the infamous ANIMAL CRACKERS, the recipe for which I’ve only shared with one very special person?

The other day I was flipping through my copy of Joy of Cooking and I found a recipe for a sponge cake with rice or potato flour instead of the traditional wheat flour. I had just picked up a fresh box of mochi flour and thought to myself that a mochi sponge cake would be just about the most wonderful thing I could put in my mouth.

It so soft.

I wondered if it would even work at all, since mochi flour is so insanely heavy and sticky. I worried a bit once I had the egg yolk batter all mixed together. It was a thick yellow paste! But in the end I prevailed. Cake is not the boss of me.

Blubberries!

As you may remember, I do not own a regular sized cake pan. I have two tiny ones. So I made three quarters of the recipe here (because it’s next to impossible to whip less than three egg yolks in a stand mixer) and went for it. I filled the pans all the way to the top which was apparently too much, because the cakes souffled and spilled (all over the pan I’d placed them on as a preventative measure). I can’t guarantee that the full recipe won’t be too much for the recommended pan, but I can tell you that the cake will, remarkably, not fall despite the weight of the mochi flour.

Anything tart 'n' citrusy will do the trick.

I finished baking the cakes last night and realized that, besides a few blueberries, I had nothing to serve them with. So I whipped up a quick lemon curd and let it chill overnight. Passion fruit curd would also probably be exceptional here, as well as flavors like yuzu or lime. So sunny!

Taste the sunshine!

This would make a tasty and unique strawberry shortcake and would probably take wonderfully to delicious additions like matcha and black sesame powder. I plan on experimenting with baking these in cupcake papers to see what happens.

You don't even need frosting!

Mochi Sponge Cake

A satisfyingly chewy gluten-free sponge cake.

Ingredients

1. 4 eggs, separated
2. 1 cup sugar
3. 2 Tbsp lemon juice
4. 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
5. Pinch salt
6. 1 cup mochi flour

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325F. Butter and flour a 9″ springform pan (use potato starch to keep it gluten-free).
2. With a hand mixer or with a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment, beat the egg yolks until thick and pale.
3. Gradually beat in the sugar, then the lemon juice, vanilla and salt. Gradually beat in the mochi flour, scraping down the bowl as you go.
4. If using a stand mixer, remove the batter so far to a large mixing bowl. Clean the beater or stand mixer bowl and attachment thoroughly, then whip the egg whites until stiff but not dry.
5. Sacrifice a dollop of the meringue into the batter to loosen it up, then fold the rest of the meringue into the batter until there are no large streaks of unincorporated mixer, but don’t overwork and deflate the batter.
6. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven up to 350F and bake for at least another 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out dry (a couple clinging crumbs are ok).
7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then release the springform and turn the cake out upside down onto a rack to finish cooling. Once cool, trim, slice and fill however you like.

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

Total time: 50 minutes

Diet (other): Gluten free

Number of servings (yield): 12

Meal type: dessert

Nutty goodness.

The first thing I’m going to show you is brought to you in part by Oh Nuts! of Brooklyn. I was contacted by them and asked if I’d like to try some of their bulk nuts and dried fruit for use in a recipe. Of course I said yes! It took me a while to decide what I wanted to try (they have a HUGE selection, and I’ll definitely be placing future bulk orders through them), and eventually I decided on raw macadamia nuts (because they are generally not something I would buy due to their price) and dried candied kiwi (which I’d never had before).

Kiwis: now in technicolor.

The kiwis are honestly kind of a better snack than an ingredient, but I did use a few alongside candied pineapple and papaya (from the store downstairs) in my first creation, some coconut macaroons topped with macadamias.

Both nutty & coconutty.

Where is the fruit, you ask? It’s a surprise!

Hey, fruit!

However, that is not one of the recipes I will be sharing today. I wasn’t overly thrilled with the way they came out and they were a pain in the butt to shape without them falling apart. They were tasty, but I thought the macadamias deserved a little something more special. So I made something else.

Crunchy & soft.

I decided to make macadamia-topped banana mochi cakes. I couldn’t find an actual recipe for banana mochi cakes, just one for Hawaiian mochi banana bread. It sounded great but contained Bisquick, something I definitely don’t keep in my kitchen, so I found a recipe for a Bisquick substitute and replaced the flour with non-glutinous rice flour to keep them gluten-free. I also added what I believe to be the banana’s best friend: Chinese 5 spice powder. And to give another slight dimension to the flavors, I used a splash of sesame oil.

Oh them banana speckles.

But that’s not all. Oh no. You see, I thought that banana and macadamia weren’t quite enough. I wanted a third flavor. I asked on Twitter. The responses were basically all cries for chocolate and coconut. But I had no chocolate in my possession (or else I’d have added cocoa nibs, I’m sure) and I didn’t want to mess with the texture by adding dessicated coconut. There was a third flavor that kept floating to the top of my brain – CARAMEL – but for a while I just couldn’t figure out the best way to add it to the batter without compromising the recipe. So I took a step back and thought about all the things that went into the recipe. It quickly became obvious that I just had to caramelize the bananas first! So I did. And the cupcakes were amazing.

Pretty cake!

Caramelized Banana Mochi Cakes with Macadamias

1. 4 medium bananas, ripe
2. 1/4 cup sugar in the raw
3. 5 g baking powder
4. 2 g sugar
5. 48 g rice flour (not Mochiko)
6. 23 g vegetable oil
7. 8 oz. Mochiko
8. 2 tsp baking soda
9. 1/2 tsp salt
10. 1/4 tsp Chinese 5 spice
11. 3/4 cup sugar
12. 3/4 cup vegetable oil
13. Splash of sesame oil
14. 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
15. 2 1/2 eggs (scramble one egg and add half the weight to the other two)
16. 1/2 cup roughly chopped macadamia nuts

Slice the bananas in half lengthwise and place on a foil-lined sheet or broiler tray. Sprinkle the raw sugar in a thick layer. Broil or torch until the sugar is melted and well caramelized. Allow to cool, then puree thoroughly in a blender and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine the 5 g baking powder, 2 g sugar and non-Mochiko rice flour in a medium-large bowl and use a pastry cutter to cut in the 23 g vegetable oil. You want the mixture to be in tiny crumbs…crumblets, if you will. Whisk in the Mochiko, baking soda, salt, 5 spice and sugar. Stir in the oil and vanilla, then the eggs, then the bananas. Allow the batter to rest for a couple of minutes, then spoon it into lined muffin tins. Sprinkle with chopped macadamias and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the edges of the cake tops are browned. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

These cupcakes, unlike most mochi cakes, are actually really good while still warm (like most banana baked goods), though a bit oily. They don’t get quite as chewy as a normal all-mochi cake, but they are extra soft and crazy fragrant. I declared them possibly the most banana-y thing EVER. Z likes them with a schmear of cream cheese.

***BONUS RECIPE Y’ALL***

I know I promised two recipes, so here’s the second one! It does deserve its own post but I only got one decent picture so I decided to just tack it on here. Prickly pears have a pretty short season so get a bunch while you can (discounted bruised-looking ones are the way to go; the outside looking yucky doesn’t mean the insides aren’t fine) and make this fast! It’s a great thing to have on hand in the early fall if you’re going through a final heat wave like much of the country is now. Just be careful and don’t touch them bare-handed – the worst pricklies are invisible!

Hard to capture the insane magenta color.

Prickly Pear Sorbet

1. 12 medium prickly pears
2. 6 Tbsp sugar
3. Juice of 2 limes
4. 1 Tbsp tequila or vodka

Wearing gardening gloves or holding the fruit with an oven mitt or other form of prickle protection, slice each prickly pear in half lengthwise and use a spoon to scoop out the pulp. Combine the pulp and the other ingredients in a blender and puree thoroughly. Strain out the seeds and chill. Once cold, churn in an ice cream maker and freeze until solid and scoopable. Makes about 1 quart.

Prickly pears come from cactus plants and as such are indigenous to the American southwest, Mexico and Israel. They come in a variety of colors ranging from yellow to magenta, with magenta being the most common. They’re full of little stone-like seeds, so they’re most often consumed blended and strained into Margaritas. Both the fruit and sorbet have a simultaneously sticky and slimy quality to them that isn’t unpleasant, it just makes for some tricky scooping sometimes. It tastes at first like unripe banana, then like lime, then not at all like either of those things, and is very tasty and addictive.

You give me really awesome cupcake wrappers, I WILL make you cupcakes in said wrappers!

As it turns out, there’s actually a lot more to a real red velvet cake than the hint of cocoa and often garish color. For one, buttermilk. That was all well and good…if I didn’t have to make it dairy-free (so I could share with my best friend). I usually use either coconut milk or condensed soy milk (which I condense myself). Luckily, after a little searching I found out that soy milk could, in fact, be spoiled with a small amount of acid just like regular milk can when you need a buttermilk substitute. One hurdle down!

Another issue I ran into was the leavening – mochi cakes generally only call for baking powder for leavening (which falls into a dense, chewy awesomeness moments after coming out of the oven) while red velvet calls for baking soda and vinegar to be added, foaming, at the last second. I went with the red velvet method and it worked out great.

Lookit that frosting! So smooth!

In keeping with my dairy-free theme, I decided that fake cream cheese and margarine was too creepy a combination to use for a frosting (despite mochi cakes not really needing frosting in general, I don’t think you can have proper red velvet without some kind of white frosting), so I went with a white chocolate-coconut milk ganache. I know white chocolate isn’t dairy-free but a small amount is tolerable, and the ganache is so rich and luxurious that you don’t need a lot. Just one little creamy, slightly coconutty swirl is enough.

Not neon red, but a more pleasant, edible shade.

Another difference between red velvet cake and mochi cake is that the fat in red velvet is generally all vegetable oil, as opposed to the melted butter used in mochi cakes. I used all vegetable oil the first time I tried to make these (yes, it took me two tries) and they came out just fine. Except, being the first try, they weren’t quite right yet. A bit too much cocoa, not enough red.

Artsy shot!

Not unexpectedly, I had been posting to Twitter the whole time about my experiment, and got a fantastic suggestion from a like-minded Twitterer. Why not add red bean paste to the mix?

OF COURSE!

So, on my second try, I substituted red bean paste for half the oil, decreased the amount of cocoa powder and used only enough dye to turn the batter a pinkish-orange color. The cakes baked up wonderfully and taste not completely unlike red velvet, from the hint of cocoa and the tang of the acidic “buttermilk”, but also a little classically Japanese with the red bean and mochi flavors also popping up a bit. And, of course, there’s that frosting…

Parrots love cupcakes too.

Red Velvet Mochi Cupcakes

First, Make the Ganache (because it takes a while to set up):

1. 200g white chocolate, chopped
2. 100g coconut milk

Melt the white chocolate over a simmering double boiler. Set aside. Heat the coconut milk until steaming (you can do this in a small saucepan or just in the microwave) and pour it into the chocolate. Using a small spatula, stir gently from the middle of the bowl until the ganache is fully emulsified, scraping along the sides once in a while but not incorporating any extra air. Set aside to set up – you can chill it if you’d like but give it a stir once or twice to make sure it doesn’t set up too hard. It can be softened at room temperature if it does.

Then, Make the Cakes (red velvet recipe adapted from Pithy & Cleaver):

1. 12 oz. plain soy milk
2. 2 tsp white vinegar
3. 2 oz. vegetable oil
4. 2 oz. sweet red bean paste
5. 1 cup (200g) sugar
6. 2 eggs
7. 2 Tbsp cocoa powder
8. 5 1/3 oz. Mochiko
9. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
10. 1/8-1/4 tsp red gel food coloring
11. 1/2 tsp baking soda
12. 1/2 tsp white vinegar

Place the soy milk in a small saucepan and simmer until it reduces to 6 oz. Remove from saucepan and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a muffin tin with paper liners (or prepare a cake pan if that’s how you roll).

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the oil, red bean paste, sugar and eggs. Add the cocoa and Mochiko, mix thoroughly. Add the 2 tsp. vinegar to the condensed soy milk and pour it into the mixture, whisk to combine. Whisk in the color gradually until you get a reddish-orange color. Measure the baking soda into a small bowl, pour in the 1/2 tsp. of vinegar and allow to begin frothing, then dump into the batter and quickly mix. Pour immediately into prepared baking vessel. Bake 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a cake comes out clean. Cool on a baking rack.

Once the cakes are fully cooled, fit a piping bag with a star tip and fill it with the ganache. Pipe a swirl onto each cupcake.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

I know there are a lot of weight measurements in this recipe, and frankly I’m not interested in converting every little thing I make. I wouldn’t make this without a scale personally. My advice to those who wish to convert the weights to volume? Don’t. Just buy a scale. They’re not expensive and after one or two recipes you’ll wonder how you ever baked without one.

Cinnamon hat!

I don’t remember how, exactly, I got this idea. I remember I was brushing my teeth. Boring idle tooth-brushing time apparently somehow made me think of mochi cake. Or maybe I thought of pumpkin. I’m not exactly sure which came first to be honest.

Hat fell down :(

I wasn’t really sure what the best way to incorporate pumpkin into the recipe would be, but I remembered I had made the apple mochi cakes by substituting applesauce for half of the melted butter so I decided to try the same with pumpkin puree.

Mmm, nibs.

I think it worked out quite nicely – the cakes came out with an orangey-yellow tinge and are yummy and chewy, just like a good mochi cake should be!

Oh my!

I used the traditional blend of every spice possible to compliment the sweet pumpkin flavor – cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, plus I threw some allspice berries in the milk before condensing it. Honestly you could probably skip the condensing step in a mochi cake recipe, I barely cooked this batch down. I don’t know why the original recipe called for evaporated milk.

Chewy, pumpkin-y, slightly spicy - what more could you want?

I also busted out the cacao nibs for a little chocolatey crunch on top. They really do provide such a nice textural contrast with the wonderfully chewy mochi and my love for pumpkin and chocolate together is well documented.

Still one of my favorite things to make.

Pumpkin Mochi Cakes

1. 7-8 oz. milk
2. 3-4 allspice berries
3. 2 oz. pureed pumpkin (canned is fine, just make sure it’s plain, none of that pie filling nonsense)
4. 2 oz. butter, melted & cooled
5. 1 cup sugar
6. 2 eggs
7. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
8. 1 tsp baking powder
9. Pinch each ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger & cloves
10. 8 oz. Mochiko
11. Ground cacao nibs, for sprinkling

Place the milk and allspice in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for a few minutes – you want to condense the milk slightly. Remove from heat and set aside to cool for at least 10 minutes to infuse the allspice flavor into the milk. Measure out 6 oz. of the milk, discarding any extra along with the allspice. Chill while you prepare the rest of the batter.

Preheat the oven to 350. In a med-large mixing bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, butter and sugar until it’s of an even consistency with no lumps. Whisk in the milk, then the eggs and vanilla. Once they are fully incorporated, whisk in the baking powder and spices all at once, then gradually mix in the Mochiko. Continue whisking until the batter is completely smooth. Pour into lined muffin tins, sprinkle with cacao nibs and bake for 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the middle of one of the cakes comes out clean. Allow to cool for a couple minutes in the tins, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Serve at room temperature. Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes.

I brought some of these in to class the same day I brought the madeleines. The response among my classmates seemed to be positive. Lots of mochi fans in my class I guess, and I do find that mochi cake “virgins” tend to be pleasantly surprised by the texture of these awesome baked goodies. I shared them with the chefs as well and chef told me he probably wouldn’t buy it in a bakery because it wasn’t something he was used to (exactly the opposite of my philosophy when it comes to buying foods but I digress). However, as he pointed out immediately after, he DID eat the whole thing. You can’t not love mochi cake I guess.