Hawaiian night has come and gone. And so now I must post about the adventure. Here is how finding a recipe for Hawaiian night went. Hrm, well this recipe says it is Hawaiian, but that doesn't mean it really is Hawaiian. Maybe they just put some coconut and pineapple in it and now they "believe" it is Hawaiian. Really, there are a lot of recipes like that. So, I spent much time researching via the internet. I found several plan a luau sites that were full of all sorts of recipes. They proved to be very useful for finding ideas.
For my dish I chose Butter Mochi. I love mochi ice cream balls. (Oooh! I just found a recipe for making your own at home. I so have to try this. Sorry, back to this post now.) So I thought that baked Mochi would probably be just as yummy. The first hurdle to hop over was what recipe to use for Butter Mochi. There are about 100 different ways to make Baked Mochi including recipes that add flaked coconut or chocolate, not to mention the varying versions of just a Butter Mochi recipe. Some recipes were calling for blocks of butter while others were only calling for 1 stick (or 1/2 cup butter). I have only this evening come to conclude that when these people wrote their recipes they really weren't speaking of 1lb blocks of butter but simply 1/4lb sticks. This is where being specific in writing a recipe comes in handy :)
And now for the recipe I choose after many, many hours of reading recipe after recipe. Sumocat's Butter Mochi. I did not stray from his recipe except in the pan I baked it in which means the temperature had to be adjusted accordingly. I used a glass baking dish and not a metal pan so I reduced the oven temperature to 325 degrees. I chose to use a high quality butter (vs choosing a store brand) since butter is playing a star role in this recipe.
I loved the end result this produced. It has a wonderful butter flavor to it. I was worried about over cooking. I could have left it in the oven for about 5 minutes longer allowing the center to cook more without any threat of burning.
The interesting part of this dish is that everyone bites into it expecting something completely different than what it is. Mochi is a chewy product. People think it is going to be cakey or brownie like and it is not that at all. So many will be confused by the texture and then be turned off of the dish all together, which really is a shame because I find it to be super delicious. Ah well, more for me!