Pumpkin mochi with lotus paste

Gooey and soft with a slight sweetness in the homemade pumpkin mochi skin, this is a fun way to enjoy this autumn produce at its peak of abundance in October - November. I made this recipe over the weekend with simple ingredients and took around an hour from start to finish. The tedious part should have been making the lotus paste but here in France, I can only get ready-made lotus paste at the asian store so that cut down the making process.

Here’s a quick look into the process:
Home made pumpkin purée > Home-made mochi skin > Shaping > Steaming

The tools you need are:
Food processor to blitz the pumpkin to a homogenous paste
Steamer. Here I used a traditional bamboo steamer but you could also use a wok with a lid and a small bowl and plate in it to steam.

Pumpkin Puree
I find the easiest way to cook a pumpkin is by steaming, skin on. the skin gets easily removed when it’s soft. You could manually mash the steamed pumpkin but a food processor / blender will provide a homogenous consistency.

Pumpkin Mochi Dough

The dough is made of home made pumpkin puree mixed with glutinous rice, a tablespoon of sugar and oil and the finished dough should be soft and smooth. I made a mistake by not covering the dough and it turned out slightly dry so the best is to have it covered until these mini “pumpkins” for ready for a hot steam.

Ingredients for 15 pumpkin mochi

• A handful of raisins ( I used 15 pieces for this recipe )

• 450 grams of ready-made Lotus paste

Mochi skin:

• 400g of butternut puree

• 1 tbsp castor sugar

• 2 tbsp neutral cooking oil

• 320g glutinous rice flour

Pumpkin Purée:

1. Slice the pumpkin into wedges, removing the seeds and fibre inside

2. Steam wedges for 10 minutes until soft. I find it easier to peel off the skin after they are steamed and it creates less waste than slicing off the skin pre-steaming.

3. In a food processor, blitz the steamed pumpkin chunks until a smooth consistency and keep aside.

Pumpkin dough:

1. In the food processor with pureed pumpkin, slowly add in glutinous flour, sugar and oil and blend until everything is well combined. Alternatively, you can transfer the pureed pumpkin into a separate bowl, adding the glutinous flour, sugar and oil and then knead by hand.

Assemble the mochi:

1. Divide lotus paste into 15 pieces with each weighing 30 grams. Roll them into balls and keep aside.

2. Divide mochi dough into 15 pieces with each weighing 35 grams. Roll them into balls and keep them covered until you are ready to form the pumpkin shape

3. Flatten 1 mochi dough ball using your palm and insert 1 lotus paste ball, encasing the lotus paste with the mochi skin and rolling into a ball.

4. Using the spine of a butter knife, create indentations all around to imitate a pumpkin.

5. Finally, insert a piece of raisin on the top to mimic the “stem” of the pumpkin

Steaming:

1. Lay the pumpkin mochis flat over parchment paper and insert into a bamboo steamer with its lid on.

2. Fill a casserole with water over high heat and once it is boiling, add in the bamboo steamer and steam for 8 minutes.

3. Leave the steamer untouched until they cool down before removing the steamer lid. This way, they wont be too sticky to handle.

I love having mochis warm or at room temperature. These can be kept in the refrigerator for 3 days and if the skin turns hard, just re-steam for a few minutes and they will get back to being soft and gooey. Enjoy! This makes an excellent 4pm tea break snack, an after-dinner dessert or even for morning breakfast!