Green tea & Red Bean Mochi Cake

Ah! I've been so busy lately I haven't posted as regularly as I do. Definitely trying to juggle too many things and I need at least three clones of me. Boo. So I'll keep this one short with an interesting body fact.

FACT: A person can live without eating for weeks, but will only survive eleven days without sleep.

Well, I guess I should just go hungry and sleep. I'm so sleep deprived. I'm usually a morning person but seriously waking up every morning at the crack of dawn is driving me insane. Thankfully no cranky behavior (guess I can't be my own judge). But imagine people around those who haven't slept crazy moodswings...they'll probably only survive a day or two.

I made this super simple and tasty mochi cake. It isn't very sweet, which is perfect for me and a lot of my aunts and relatives who were eating them. They make lovely gifts when you wrap them up nicely. Koreans love this stuff. I mean, it's mocha and it's got red bean. What's not to love?

Matcha Green Tea & Red Bean Mochi Cake
Makes 2 loaves or 9x13" pan

Ingredients
3 cups glutinous rice flour (I used a mix of 1 cup brown and 1 cup white)
2 tbsp Matcha green tea powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups milk
2 tbsp oil
2 eggs
Filling
1/2 cup red bean boiled (or measure from a can of prepared sweetened red bean and cut sugar to taste)
1/4 cup dried dates chopped (or use diced kabocha squash)
1/4 cup walnuts quartered

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Grease pan or 2 loaf tins with oil or butter
3. Whisk all your dry ingredients in one bowl (rice flour, matcha powder, sugar, baking powder, salt)
4. In a large bowl, whisk eggs, milk and oil. Combine dry mix with the wet mix.
5. Gently fold in the filling ingredients. Feel free to use all red bean, or add raisins. Seriously, whatever you like.
6. Bake for 40-50 mins or until the sides pull away from the pan.

Glossy with honey and walnuts!

Green Tea Cake with Red Bean Filling

I have all this left over red bean from making the red bean mochi and also a lot of time. Well, I have to write a paper but I have absolutely no motivation in any bone. Gah... So here is a recipe to use that red bean filling. Green tea and red bean go so well together!

Onto a totally different tangent. Have you realized when you're dating that you seem to look more and more like your boyfriend/girlfriend?? Or am I just crazy?

Factoid: Men Tend to Seek Women who Look Like Themselves
After dating for a while, we all know that people tend to find mates that are similar to them in many ways, such as cultural background, socioeconomic status, and intellectual ability. (Well, true for me...) It's been found in many surveys too that spouses more similar to each other are more successful in terms of having babies and staying longer together than less similar pairs.

In this particular paper, they got 150 volunteers and showed them pictures of the opposite sex, whose faces were warped/photoshopped to resemble their own face. They were then asked to choose a potential partner from 3 images: self-resembling face, non-resembling face, attractive face.  Men apparently rated the self-resembling faces as most attractive (egotistical tsk tsk). In cavemen terms, men choose a physically similar mate to enhance his and his spouse's fitness and the genetic fitness of your offspring. Meaning if they looked alike, there's a higher chance his genes will be carried onward. Like father, like son geddit?

Women are less superficial far more complex when it comes to making mate choices. They didn't show any preference for similarity, just preference for the most attractive hotties ;)  It just goes to show that physical appearance is only one of the many influencing factors to making our decision. Another important factor is scent!

Oh women are so much more evolved than men~

Green Tea Layer Cake with Red bean Filling

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp matcha powder

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 small/medium eggs
1/2 cup yogurt
1.5 tsp vanilla

Red Bean filling

Preheat oven to 350F
In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, yogurt, vanilla) and sugar.

In another bowl, sift the flour, mix the dry ingredients and add that to the wet. Mix until JUST incorporated. It's okay if there are a few lumps.

I used a huge 10" x 13" pan to get a large thin sheet of cake. But you can use 2 smaller pans for the same effect. Liberally grease the pans and add in the batter. Bake for 15-20mins or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let that cake cool for 20 mins. Invert it onto a plate. Cut the cake in 1/2 if you used a large pan. Trim the edges if you want to make it pretty. Spread red bean over the top side. (The cake is amazing on it's own too!)

Slap on the other layer. Dust with some powdered sugar and cut up and serve!

Daifuku - Red Bean Mochi

Woo! Done with exams! Now I can take a really long nap. Maybe one that will go until I wake up the next day haha. Those are soo good. You wake up and you still want to go back to sleep. My neighbor is the king of naps. His body is just scheduled to take a quick nap at 2pm every single day- without fail. I can't seem to take short naps. My naps turn into 3 hours and then I wake up and it's dark outside. Fail.

Cognitive Impairment due to Long Naps are worse than that due to Sleep Deprivation
So why am I ranting so much about sleeping? Well, I was reading this paper about the benefits of naps. Not just sleeping. Napping. We could really benefit from a afternoon snooze because it improves logical reasoning, reaction time in tests and increased vigor (duh). Research has really got down into trying to make our naps better, by looking at the duration, age, and the time of day. Essentially, taking longer naps (30mins plus) can produce sleep inertia. That's the groggy, confused feeling that's supposedly worse than the feeling from sleep deprivation. Sleep inertia is deadly. It impairs sensory motor and cognitive tasks, impairs accuracy and puts you in a stinky mood. It's worse when you're also sleep deprived.

You should aim for 10 to 20mins, and you'll feel super invigorated immediately after waking up. It improves with practice. For reals. Habitual nappers maintain a tonic level of alertness throughout the nap and can disperse sleep inertia more quickly. Postnap performance improvement right after waking up was true for seasoned nappers.

Holy. I need to jump on this napping band wagon and practice napping...like now! zzZZZZ

Red Bean Mochi
Adapted from veganyumyum
Makes 10-12

Ingredients
1 cup Glutinous Rice Flour (I used the Mochiko brand, see pic below)
3 tbsp sugar
2/3 cup water
Cornstarch, potato starch or tapioca starch for dusting
1 tsp matcha green tea powder (to make the green ones)

Filling
Red bean paste (I made some way back but you can buy them premade)
Strawberries if you like!

Home made recipe for red bean paste
1.5 cups adzuki beans
4 cups water
1 cup sugar (depends on how sweet/ or not sweet - I use a mix of brown and white)
1 tbs vegetable oil
1-2 pinches salt


Place beans and water in a pot, cover, bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for 1.5 hours or until the beans are very soft.

Strain water from the beans, put back into the pot and on the fire at low heat. Add sugar and oil. Use a masher (I just used a fork) to smash all the beans. Of course you can use a blender and save you some elbow grease. This should turn into a nice thick paste. I like my paste chunky so I leave some whole ones in there.

Take off the heat and let it cool. You can adjust how sweet you want it too. This is a lot of red bean, enough for 3 batches of mochi. I save mine in the freezer and use it for later.



Making the Mochi

Add together the flour, sugar, water, matcha powder (if using) to a microwave safe bowl. Stir well until no lumps. Scrape down the side of the bowl so doesn't get all sticky on the sides too.


Cover lightly with plastic wrap and microwave for 2 mins on high. Remove and stir quickly. Put it back in the microwave for another 1 min. If you see the dough sinking as you open the door, it should be done! Don't overcook it or it'll be rock hard.


Have a dusted plate or countertop with cornstarch. Scoop up a little more than 1 tbsp of dough, dust your fingers and palm with starch too and flatten the dough while it's hot (you can use a rolling pin if you like). Put about 1-2 tsp of red bean paste and seal the opening with a pinch. I like a lot of filling and less mochi so adjust as you like!








To keep them fresh over the next few days, individually wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate. If you leave it out, they'll get dry and tough.

Make sesame seed covered ones by wetting the outside a little and rolling it on sesame seeds. Nom nom nom.

Some tips: You really want to dust your fingers thoroughly!