Cooking Mochi

The previous post described the best way to get mochi (gather in a crowd people, catch the mochi when other people throw it at you).  I was able to collect about a kilo of mochi, now it's time to eat.

Above is two pieces of the mochi, it is very hard before cooking.  There are many ways to prepare mochi, I'm going to try heating it in the oven below.  I first set it at 230C for 2 minutes, this turned out not to be long enough, I ended up heating it for about 7 minutes.

Below is kinako, or soybean flour, it is mixed with sugar and used as a topping on mochi.

As the mochi cooks it starts to blow up.  The bubbles are mostly air though, this is a good sign that cooking is done.

Below is the finished mochi with kinako on top.  YUM!