Mizu Shingen Mochi

[jameswo]

Just seen this, I'd love your thoughts on a few things:

http://www.odditycentral.com/foods/this-japanese-water-cake-looks-and-tastes-unlike-any-sweet-youve-tried-before.html

— anyone tasted it? Flavour? Mouth feel?

— recipe that's tried n tested?

— best to serve with?

— honestly, I'm asking... which course would you serve it? As a sweet course?

— does it melt 'to a puddle' or just compress and weep?

Looks great though

[tinyragebaking]

I have never tried it as it should be, so I am not sure what it is like, but video and list of ingredients are here. 

I just tried making it with the listed ingredients: 500 cc water, 15 g agar powder, 12 g granulated sugar.  I did have one variable when I made it: smaller, non-spherical molds (I used bear shapes, no more than 1/2 inch and 1/2 c bowls) but the texture was definitely too solid, chunky and gluey.  I even threw the 1/2 c agar hockey puck on the ground! I think I might try it again, but reduce the agar powder by 75% perhaps?  Texture was too thick for me to really comment on flavor (which doesn't seem like there is, more it's a vehicle for the brown sugar syrup and soybean powder that it is plated with).  

I hope this helps somewhat! 

[helenjp]

Just a few thoughts:

1) Usually sugar isn't added to agar jellies - 12g seems OK, but it could make for a tough jelly if you added a lot of sugar and boiled it down too much.

2) A lot of the Japanese recipes use modified agar jelly powders such as Cool Agar = agar plus carrageenan, Ina Agar A = fructose, agar, devils tongue root powder, thickening agent (starch?), Ina Agar L = fructose, agar, thickening agent (starch?) . This produces a much softer and more elastic jelly than pure agar, but allows it to set at room temperature. Attempting to make an agar gel with a really high proportion of water just creates mush, not a soft jelly. 4 or 5 grams of agar should be enough to set 500 ml of water.

3) The shape of the mold might be more important than you think - the spherical shape allows plenty of soft "inside" in proportion to the tougher dehydrated skin on the outside.