Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup glutinous rice flour (Don't worry, there's actually no gluten in the rice flour! Chinese people use the word 'glutinous' to describe how sticky the rice flour is. And it's STICKY)

1 1/4 cup water

1 cup icing sugar

Potato starch for dusting

Filling (Eg. Red Bean, Peanut Butter, Nutella, etc.)

Cover a chopping board (or any surface you can get messy with, really) with glad wrap. It's not a must, but it makes cleaning up a pinch. Pour a heap of potato starch on the surface in preparation of the (deadly) sticky mochi to come...

Pour the flour and sugar into a large bowl.

Add the water. A good trick to make sure that there is no lumps is to first pour in 1/3 cup of water in, and mix thoroughly. Then pour the rest of the water in and mix it again. The mixture should be very wet and have the consistency of pancake mixture.

Microwave the mixture until it's thick, sticky and somewhat translucent. We needed 3 minutes, a stir-through, then another 3 minutes. Best to let it cool somewhere -it will be ridiculously hot. Well, ours were.

This is optional again, but it's better if you pour the mixture into a shallow microwaveable container. If you can't be bothered, or don't have a suitable container that suits, just use a microwaveable bowl. Note - microwaveable. This dish is going for a good cook. Cover with glad wrap.

Now just drop your fingers into some potato starch, grab a tablespoon or so of the mixture and dunk it into more potato starch - or else. Let's just say my camera has some mochi on it right now...and that's why there's no photos...I guess we didn't use enough potato starch...or my hands are too hot?

Anyways, stretch out the mochi and then tip a teaspoon or so amount of filling in it. Then just wrap the filling up with the mochi, pressing the edges together (it'll stick by itself). Gently shape it to a round ball.

Tada! These things last for a few days, depending on what the filling is. Our red bean mochi lasted for a few days in a airtight container, but then we ate it all... o vo When the mochi contains other fillings, such as fresh strawberries (yes, you can do that...), it's probably better to refrigerated the mochi, and eat it quickly. You could also simply freeze it, and defrost it when you want to eat it.