Friday, January 19, 2007

Playing with Daifuku

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Fruit and cream daifuku

What’s “IN” now among young Japanese women is using pastry cream and fruit for daifuku filling in place of traditional “an (sweetened bean paste).” On several Japanese foodblogs, I’ve seen combinations like pastry cream and strawberry (or melon or banana), or pastry cream and chestnut cream, or even pastry cream+whipping cream+fruit. Someone did cheese cream (mixture of cream cheese, sugar and lemon juice) daifuku without fruit but it could be good with some kind of fruit, too. I’ll give it a try next time.

Today I tried:
1) Strawberry, pastry cream and whipping cream
2) Strawberry, pastry cream, whipping cream and coffee-an (dissolve 1+1/2 teasp. instant coffee with 1+1/2 teasp. hot water and mix with 100 g sweetened white bean paste)
3) Banana, pastry cream, whipping cream and coffee-an ← No photo.
4) Pastry cream, whipping cream and chestnut cream.

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The ones on the right are the chestnut-cream version

I liked the ones with coffee-an. The coffee-flavored sweet bean paste may not be great with all kinds of fruits, but I liked it very much with strawberry and it was OK with banana.

I’ve learned that piping cream into small flat balls and freezing them beforehand helps a lot when making cream-filled daifuku. You need to wait until the cream thaws before you take a big bite, but it doesn't take too long, so no big deal.

For daifuku recipe, click here. (I updated the instruction :))


P.S. * My friends just told me that this type of daifuku was probably "in" a couple of years ago and nothing new any more... :P I guess many women got inspired by the wide variety of flavors that "MOCHI CREAM" (franchise confectionery by comme ca ??) introduced. I heard they have more than 20 different flavors of sweet bean paste, cream and their combinations.


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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! I have the right glutinous rice flour for this! I must try making this now.

Anonymous said...

your daifuku looks very nice!

Anonymous said...

You are not wrong!!!!! I see these everywhere!! Because I haven't been here long enough to know it is a fashion (although I probably ought to!) I assumed it was some strange direction Japanese cooking was taking. Thanks for this post. Although I thought it was a strange turn, I think they are very delicious - especially the mikan ones :-)

Anonymous said...

They are so cute and look devine! I want to eat them all!!! I love the one filled with ice cream!! I don't think I can make them like you though....
So funny I bought frozen daifuku on sale and ate it for very late dinner...

Anonymous said...

I love classic strawberry mochi, so this whole cream thing is a bit hard for me to accept, hehe.

obachan said...

Ghanima
Let me know if you come up with a new invention ;)

k & s
Thanks. I froze these daifuku in the photos to slice them in half, but it made the strawberries tart :(

Lucas
Gosh, I didn’t know there was such a thing as mikan daifuku, but I found it on the net! Boy this IS unbelievable! But most reviews I read said it was unexpectedly good. (One review said “The daifuku skin, shiro-an and the mikan tasted good together, but it would have tasted better if eaten separately.” LOL

Ireney
Now that I tried making frozen daifuku myself, I’m amazed that the mochi skin of yukimi daifuku (the one filled with ice cream) can stay that soft and elastic when frozen with ice cream.

Erin
When I first saw a strawberry daifuku, I thought it was totally off the wall. I couldn’t accept the idea of eating fruit and sweetened bean paste together. But it changed as I grew older, so… ;)

Anonymous said...

I followed your recipe for making daifuku and I actually made it! Thank You! I covered the whole thing in cinnamon powder in order to hide my mistake. haha! It worked nicely because I made red bean paste with cinnamon:) So I was thinking maybe I can try making it with pastry cream and fruit... Could I use instant jell'o pudding instead of pastry cream? Does that sound bit weird? I still can't believe I made it!

obachan said...

Wow! You actually followed my recipe?! How brave! Not many people do that. LOL
Instant jello pudding? I don't see any reason why not. Enjoy!
BTW, red bean paste with cinnamon is something new to me. Mmmmm.... I wonder what it would taste like when wrapped in daifuku with whipping cream... mmmm... outa try. ;d

Anonymous said...

hi obachan,

I definitely want to try and make this mochi now!

Question for you. My friend recently brought back some white peach mochi from Japan (the shiroan was flavored). Suggoku umakatta desu yo! Do you happen to know a recipe for white peach mochi? Or maybe just do nama cream momo daifuku instead of ichigo daifuku?

And what do you do the nama cream? Do you whip the it, and then pipe it, and then freeze it?

obachan said...

Hi mochimochi,
Thanks for your info. I didn't know there was such a thing as momo (peach) daifuku, but looks like I missed a lot. I googled and found a bunch of momo daifuku posts. Unfortunately, all of them were about store-bought ones with real white peach and shiro-an (sweetened white bean paste), and the shiro-an was not peach flavored.

If you could find shiro-an over there, I definitely recommend it over nama cream, because all the reviews addressed how great the shiroan-peach combination was. But if nama cream was the only possible alternative, yeah, I would whip and pipe the cream to make bunch of cream balls and freeze them. If the frozen cream balls were too big, you can slice or chop them any way you want to make it easier to wrap anyway. (Or maybe it'd save a trouble if piped them flat?)

Anonymous said...

Obachan - belated happy new year :) Not having been to Japan for a few years I have no idea what's in (and out) there but those daifuku do look delicious indeed :) I really miss the texture of Japanese sweets.

obachan said...

Hi Keiko,
Belated happy new year to you, too! (Actually, today is setsubun... :P )
Well, here in Japan, natto was definitely IN last month, but not any more.
Talking about texture of Japanese sweets, I crave for ういろう once in a while. There's something about its texture that attracts me very much. 

Anonymous said...

Hello! Your recipe looks wonderful! I was wondering what recipe you used for your pastry cream though.. I've been looking for one for so long! Thanks!

obachan said...

Hello, anonymous commenter,
So sorry that I didn't respond earlier!! I usually use this recipe(see the comment section) that "a fellow baker" gave me and gives it a few of my own twists. Hope this helps!