Yay.  I finally made some sweets this past week.  I wanted to make a treat for a colleague who was leaving – turns out he doesn’t even like mochi.  Hahaha well I wasn’t offended, not everyone likes mochi.  I got to share the mochi with coworkers and family and they all seemed to like it!  I made two types of mochi, a lilikoi mochi and a strawberry milk mochi.  It’s a plus and a minus that when I make common recipes that I like to make it in a way that isn’t served a lot.  That’s how I came to these two – also, I LOVE lilikoi.  The downfall is that I could easily fail at making uncommon recipes but luckily these came out okay!

Lilikoi Mochi ready for the oven…

Version 1

Version 2

So why were there two versions?  Well, I wanted to have more pieces of the mochi.  Then I realized that each one would take 1 hour to bake.  I forgot how long baking can take.  I’m so used to cooking fast dishes!  So I made one recipe and split it into two batches.  The first version was cooked for the entire hour.  I needed the pan right away so I had to take it out of the pan.  My god that was a mess and I pretty much made a huge hole in it…that I tried to bring back together.  The second batch, I threw in the oven and baked for half an hour since it was only half the batch.  While the second version has a very nice crust, I think the first version was the best looking and tasting.  It had a HUGE crust and my coworkers are like all edge lovers, lol.  This recipe calls for lilikoi juice but when I went to the stores, it doesn’t look like they sell lilikoi concentrate in the frozen section anymore!  They have a mix with lilikoi in it but not a straight lilikoi juice.  I had to buy the powder mix from Hawaiian Sun and made it with half the water to keep a more concentrated flavor in the mochi. This mochi was interesting because when you start to eat it, it tastes like any other mochi but the lilikoi taste hits you at the end!  I would definitely make this again.

Strawberry Milk Mochi

As the lilikoi was baking in the oven.  I started making my strawberry milk mochi in the microwave.  This recipe was very easy to make!  This recipe only had three ingredients, then you threw it into a glass dish and into the microwave for 10 minutes.  Right when it was done, I flipped it onto a flat surface with katakuriko and started cutting it.  I used a sturdy spatula and it was pretty easy to cut.  Kids and adults liked this strawberry milk mochi so it was a success!  The original recipe called for melon milk which would have been great but I don’t know where to find that!  Anyway, let me share the recipes that I used to make these!

Recipes!

Strawberry Milk Mochi (I substituted strawberry milk for the melon milk)

Lilikoi Mochi (scroll all the way to the bottom for the recipe)