Vegan Mochi Ice Cream Dumplings

This one takes some patience. And microwave times may vary, so plan on experimenting a little.

Tools

• A smallish microwaveable mixing bowl
• A spoon and fork for mixing and mashing
• A muffin pan intended for small muffins
• A rolling pin
• Measuring cups and spoons

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup glutinous rice flour, plus a little more for dusting
• vegan ice cream or sorbet

Instructions

Start by putting the muffin pan in the freezer. It also helps to set your freezer cold enough that the ice cream is just barely scoopable.

Mix the sugar and flour together, then add the water and mix it until there aren't any more lumps. It mixes pretty easily, so you can just pour the water right in, all at once.

Microwave it, covered, for a minute and a half. It should come out rubbery on the outside, but about half the volume of the mixture should still be a liquid pool in the middle. Mash it back together until its texture is uniform again. It will be very sticky during this phase.

Cover it again and refrigerate it. Once it has cooled, it will still be sticky, but less than it was before cooling. Pull off tablespoon-sized blobs of dough, and form them into balls, dusting them with extra flour to make them less sticky, and flatten them into round pancake shapes about four inches in diameter. Remove the muffin pan from the freezer.

Lay a pancake over one of the wells in the muffin pan. Take a scoop of ice cream—about ½ tablespoon—and place it in the middle of the flattened doughball, causing it to sink into the muffin well. Gradually and gently, wrap and pinch the dough until it completely surrounds the ice cream. The ice cream will be starting to melt at this point, so be sure to press only on the dough and not on the dumpling itself. It's tricky.

Do this for the rest of the doughballs, and put the whole pan in the freezer. At this point, you may want to set your freezer's temperature back to normal. Otherwise, the dough will freeze way too hard to eat, which is good if you need to transport the dumplings, but bad if you want to eat them right out of the freezer.

Makes about 12 dumplings.

Copying

Copyright © 2006 Thomas Peri

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this recipe (the "Recipe"), to deal in the Recipe without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Recipe, and to permit persons to whom the Recipe is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The Recipe shall be used for Good, not Evil.

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Recipe.

THE RECIPE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE RECIPE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE RECIPE.