Petite creme and red bean gelatin

When it comes to candies and desserts, I like the mildly sweet ones, not those overloaded with so much sugar that you can't taste any other tastes in the food. In order to fully savor the pleasure of a sweet, I like to serve it along with a cup of light tea or some bitter drinks that help heighten the flavor of the sweet. One fine day, I just had an insatiable craving for sweets. So I decided to make my own gelatin of creme and red bean paste using a mini-muffin mold. Each hole in the mold is about 1/8 cup by volume. I made 6 little cups. I used butter to coat the mold because its texture and flavor go really well with the creamy taste of the milk. A variation is to use the combination of rum cream and dark coffee; or evaporated milk and bailey+cocoa. Fun!

Recipe: Creme and red bean gelatin (make six gelatins of 1/8-cup size)

Ingredients:

- 5 tablespoon (TB) red bean paste 

- 2 teaspoons (tp) sugar (to taste)

- dash of salt

- 4 fl oz evaporated milk

- 2 tp gelatin powder

Procedure:

1. Thinly coat 6 holes of a min-muffin baking pan with unsalted butter. 

2. Mix 1 tp of gelatin powder with 2 TB cold water. Heat to melt gelatin powder. Then blend in 3 TB evaporated milk. Pour into the mold to fill the 6 buttered holes by one-third full. 

3. Mix red bean paste with sugar and a dash of salt. Note the sweetness of food tends to be dampened when chilled, so if the paste tastes just sweet enough at this point, then add a little more sugar to make sure it tastes sweet after chilling. Let the mold sit in fridge for 1/2 hour or until gelatin is set. 

4. Mix 1 tp of gelatin powder with 2 TB of cold water. Heat to melt, then blend in the 5 TB of sweetened red bean paste. Mix thoroughly and let it cool to room temperature. Then pour into the mold, on top of the milk layer. Note that though the volume used in recipe adds up to 12 TB, water may evaporate during heating. So the cups may not be filled to top. Let chill for 1 hour or until set. 

5. When serving, use a sharp plastic bendable toothpick to loosen the gelatin from the side and bottom of the mold. Invert the mold to let the gelatin fall out.

I actually prepared the red bean paste from scratch. The Chinese make their red bean paste by prolonged boiling of the bean (down to complete dissolution in the liquid), then by filtering with a cloth. But I like to eat the skin of the red bean because it has fiber. So here is what I do.

Procedure of making red bean paste:

1. Soak 1/2 cup of red beans in 1.5 cup water for 3 days. Replace water each day. Beans will double in volume after soaking.

2. Boil red beans in 2 cups of water. In the first hour use med-high heat. Then use med-low heat for another 1-2 hours. Add water to keep the beans covered by liquid. The beans are ready when they flake easily with a fork. At this point, the liquid should also be red and a little thick. The ratio of liquid to bean is about 1:1. 

3. Take out beans and save the liquid. Use a mortar and pestle or fork to ground the beans into a coarse mixture of flakes and bean skins. Then add back the liquid to form a coarse paste that slides thickly when scooped up by a spoon. Use a blender to blend the mixture into a smooth paste. Let sit for 20-30 minutes. The mixture should remain uniform in texture. If the mixture starts to separate into water and bean, then it's too thin, remove the liquid on top. 

4. For storage, heat the mixture on med-low heat until it boils, stirring often to prevent sticking. Then save in jar to chill, or tupperware to freeze.

The plain red bean paste always gives me a hint of coffee taste when it first enters the mouth. Perhaps it's just the illusion of my own senses.