New Year's Mochi

Mochi (pounded rice) is a New Year's tradition in Japan. During January, I usually can find these types of treats at the stores.
The outside is a layer of sweet mochi (dango) and inside there are things like strawberry and bean. It is a sweet bean.

Side Story: My Taiwanese friend about puked when she first tasted chili. Beans are supposed to be sweet! She wasn't prepared for how our beans would taste.
This is my favorite. It's like strawberry shortcake with mochi around it. NUM. The texture, for some reason, just adds to the whole experience.
This one has 2 layers of cream: white, and pink. The pink is strawberry flavored. I didn't do such a good job of cutting this. It's hard to do without crushing it.

William came in from playing, and said, "What's that good smell?" It was fried mochi!

I like to make a sweet mochi. Sweet rice powder (machiko... I call it, my cheat-o... it's so much easier than steaming and pounding the rice), sugar, water and coconut milk, then bake. My Japanese teacher showed me how to fry it up. So, I like doing that as well.

For the new year's party we went to, I had made this batch pink. The next one, I left white. The pink gets eaten more. Memo to self!

BTW, the picture of Wm above, if you double-click, you can see how his two front teeth are growing in.