My New TAIYAKI Pastry Mold

I had this Japanese TAIYAKI pastry mold many many years ago.  Back in the 80's, it was a rare find.  There were not very many Japanese store or grocery stores in my area, except in San Francisco Japan town or may be in downtown San Jose.  The TAIYAKI pastry mold only had two fish shape in one mold.  In order to make 20 some TAIYAKI, it would take me close to 4 hours standing and making them.  Now we got so much options.  Local Japanese grocery stores and websites.  I found this particular mold at Amazon.  I was very doubtful about it because each TAI (the name of the fish - I think it's red snapper - the "red" signifies good luck) mold is only 2 inches long.  Compared to my original 4+ long TAIYAKIKUN.  But I need to be able to make it faster.  There are commercial type or electric home unit, but price goes up as the number of TAI mold per unit increase.
To my surprise, this TAIYAKI mold turned out pretty good.
This is my original mold.

 This is my new mold.

 Ingredients:  organic ingredients are up to the Cook
275 g Organic Cake Flour
1-1/2 tsp Baking Powder without Aluminum
2 Organic Eggs
80 g Organic Cane Sugar
1-1/2 C Organic Milk or 2% Lactose Free Milk or any milk
1/4 tsp Kosher Salt
1 can of ANKO - sweet  Red Bean Paste or freshly home prepared sweet Red bean "paste"

PREPARATION -
Stir ANKO to make the paste even.  Transfer into a pastry bag.
Shift flour and baking powder well. Add sugar and salt.  Add eggs, and milk.  Mix well until thick paste.

COOKING - 
Rub in some cooking oil with paper towel unless you own a Japanese oil brush while preheating the mold over medium low heat.  (I use gas range.)
This mold I purchased is coated, but I still coat it with cooking oil to make sure the good fish impression will be printed on the pastry.  *Do Not Use high heat.  *I am concerned with this Teflon or PTFE coated cookware, but I made sure that I cook with it a medium low heat.
Add 1 full teaspoon of batter into each mold.  Making sure there are batter at the fish tail, fins, and eye area.  Center should be quite 'hallow' to form a cavity to be filled with sweet filling.

Working quickly - Squeeze 1-1/2 tsp or use your eye to decide how much ANKO, the red bean paste, in the center.

 Then, quickly add another teaspoonful of batter on the top of the Red Bean.

Close the mold top.  Flip over.

 

Cook two minutes with mold seating at the center of the gas range.
Then, move the mold to right side or the left side to cook 1 minute each side to brown the pastry.
Then, Flip the mold and repeat the cooking process.
Be aware that this new 4 fish mold does not have a 'Stay' clip to keep the mold closed.  The Stay clip in the older mold keeps the hot air and make sure that flipped side batter would brown with good impression of the fish.  This new mold does not have the clip.  I find myself holding the mold closed to make sure the other side brown well with good fish impression.

A REMINDER - *Don't forget that the batter contain baking powder, with or without the 'stay' clip, the batter will swell.  If there are too much batter added to the either side, be aware that the batter would OVER FLOW out of the cooking mold.  Be prepared with moist towel and be ready to trim the extra woozed out batter off the sides of mold.  You will learn as you go how much batter to fill.

TO CHECK FOR DONENESS:  Open the mold slightly and you should be able to see the color of the TAIYAKI.  When beautiful.  While holding the mold handle closed, move it over to a cookie rack.
Open the mold handles.  Allow it to drop out gently onto the cookie rack or use a pointy chop stick and scrape the extra browned batter toward the edge or the center and try to pry the fish out and drop out gently onto the cookie rack.
Serve when it is cooled.
You can use a scissors to clip off the extra crispy attached.

*IMPORTANT Family Note:  Never allow someone to eat Hot MOCHI, hot baked sweet potato, hot TAIYAKI or anything with guey or with Filling.  The family member can burn their mouth or internal throat area badly.
This one could have a bit more filling adding.  Will do in the next batch.

 Time to pack up and ready for cookie exchange?

Tote them to the party in my favorite carry bag.  This aplat carry bag is made to carry 9x13 cake pan, etc, but I use it to carry any goodies that it can hold.

And if you hurry, they are having a holiday sales right now. 
https://aplat.com/