Bad Idea Fridays: Mochi

Today is my birthday. This proffered Bad Idea Friday post from the incomparable A (or ---, as her friends call her) is a perfect birthday gift- I don't have to destroy the kitchen or post today, suckers. Hurrah for guest posts.

1) Purchase a small box of glutinous rice flour on a whim.
2) Decide that you have too many clean dishes in your house
3) Read rice flour box for a recipe because you are Irish and only recently mastered cooking brown rice in a rice maker.
4) Note that the only recipes on box are for chocolate mochi (all out of cocoa) and white sauce (I can make roux with cheap flour).
5) Google.
6) Opt for a stove top recipe due to a distressing lack of microwave safe containers
7) Combine 1 part rice flour, 1 part sugar, and 2 parts water, heat without boiling until quite thick. (I may have erred here.)
8) Place mochi in a very well oiled pan to cool. (13x9 would be better than 8x8.)
9) Wait several hours for mochi to set. When it does not, place in 250F oven for two hours. (When in doubt, bake, there is no recipe anywhere which advises this because...)
10) Remove mochi from oven. Notice a distressing texture on surface, somewhat like the patchwork of dessicated moss and pond scum from the bottom of a dry reservoir.
11) Leave mochi out all night, partly in disgust, partly to cool
12) Cut gummy blocks the next morning. Dust one with flour. Find it inedible and decide to dust the rest with confectioner's sugar. (bad idea because...)
13) Hydroscopic properties of the sugar cause mochi to become [more] digusting, sticky, sweaty globs of novel-textured bland starch.
14) Relegate to the back of the fridge for a week, then compost. Perhaps soil bacteria and saprophytic fungi will relish this pure energy source.

I'm fairly certain rabbits are better confectioners than I am.

-A