Chocolate strawberry daifuku

For a long time I thought there was nothing better than strawberries dipped in chocolate. I was wrong. Because now I know there are strawberries dipped in chocolate and wrapped in mochi. The succulence of the strawberry and the sweetness of the chocolate combine perfectly with the chewiness of the mochi to create a taste and texture experience like no other.

Ichigo daifuku (“strawberry great fortune,” which I think is the perfect name) is often eaten in spring in Japan and is particularly associated with Hinamatsuri (Girls’ Festival). Normally people use sweet bean paste as the middle layer, not chocolate. However, to be honest, I don’t much like sweet bean paste. Besides, it’s high in FODMAPs, so now I have an excuse not to eat it. It’s not very often that low-FODMAP is convenient, so I’ll take it!

Mochi is normally pounded glutinous rice, AKA sweet rice, AKA sticky rice. (“Glutinous” does not mean it contains gluten; don’t worry.) Traditionally, people put a lot of sticky rice (which is not the same thing as the slightly sticky short-grained rice eaten with most meals in Japan) into an usu, which is a huge wooden platform of sorts with a depression on top. Then they take big wooden mallets and pound the heck out of it. (You can see a dramatic rice-pounding performance here. The men in the video are making a coloured mochi.) Don’t worry; I’m not going to make you do that.

Another common way to make mochi in Japan is with a special mochi-making machine. When I was a kid, my mother co-bought one with a number of Japanese friends in Canada, and the machine made the rounds from house to house, making mochi for all. To be honest, as a kid, I didn’t like mochi. My mother normally served it either in big cakes that were too sticky and bland for my taste, or with anko, the aforementioned sweet bean paste, which at the time I detested with a fervour I have since lost.

In any case, I never even thought about making mochi myself until very recently, when I learned there was another way, a MUCH, MUCH easier way. A way that I thought at first must be cheating. Because it just involves mixing sweet rice flour, which I was already familiar with from gluten-free baking, with water, and microwaving it. Easy peasy.

I basically got the recipe from the fabulous Japanese food blog Just One Cookbook, but I tweaked it a little, particularly for the second batch, because I found the first batch called for either just a little too much water or not enough sweet rice flour. Also, I obviously used chocolate instead of anko. So although I’ll send you back to Just One Cookbook if you want to see step-by-step pictures, here’s my version.

Chocolate strawberry daifuku (dairy free)

I made 12 but I made two batches on the advice it’s easier to make them in batches. In retrospect, these babies are fairly filling and they don’t keep well so next time I would probably only make six. Therefore, I’m giving quantities for six.

• 6 large strawberries, hulled
• 1 cup sweet rice flour
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 good-quality dark chocolate bar, dairy free if necessary (mine was 85 grams and I found I had a little left over; you could also use dairy-free chocolate chips)
• 1/4 cup almond milk

1. Cover a large plate with non-stick baking paper.
2. Melt the chocolate in a microwave, double boiler, or by putting a bowl in a saucepan containing freshly boiled, simmering water. Add almond milk and mix well. (I know normally chocolate-covered strawberries are dipped in pure melted chocolate but I didn’t want to end up with a hard shell inside the mochi.)
3. Dip the strawberries in the chocolate so as to coat generously. Place on the plate and refrigerate.
4. Prepare a roasting pan by shaking cornstarch onto it, generously enough so the whole surface is coated with some to spare.
5. In a microwave-safe bowl, mix the sweet rice flour and the sugar. Add water a little at a time so as to form a paste. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look very thick. It will thicken up in the microwave. However, it shouldn’t be as thin as milk.
6. Cover loosely with PVC-free plastic wrap and microwave on high for one minute. You may find at this point you have some areas that are thick and others that are thin.
7. Mix well with a silicone spatula or spoon, re-cover and microwave on high for another minute. By this point it will start to look like mochi but some parts of the mixture will still be opaque white rather than transculent.
8. Re-cover and microwave on high for 30 seconds. Mix again. It should now be very thick and slightly transculent. Scrape onto cornstarch-covered baking tray.
9. Turn over the mochi, then flatten it a little and fold in half. Then use your spatula to cut it into six roughly equal pieces.
10. In your hand, work the mochi until you have flattish circles about 3 inches in diameter. Do them all before bringing in the strawberries. This will give them a chance to cool just enough that they won’t melt the chocolate like crazy while still being easy to work.
11. Get the strawberries out of the fridge and wrap in the mochi, pinching and twisting the mochi as necessary to completely cover.
12. Serve at room temperature. If you have to store them, store them at room temperature and eat within about 24 hours. If you refrigerate them, the mochi will turn unpleasantly hard and if you microwave them later to try to soften the mochi, the strawberries and chocolate will get cooked, which you don’t want.