Japanese cuisine: recipe for mochi and daifuku. Mochi (or omochi) and daifuku (“stuffed mochi“) rice cakes are my most favourite traditional Japanese sweets (ie. wagashi). Some people think that the taste of the rice mochi mass is not very noticeable and bland. But I honestly love it and could eat a tone of sweets made of it. Therefore, today I decided to share with you the recipe for mochi and daifuku. You can easily make these Japanese sweet rice cakes at home.

Before you go to the recipe, learn more about these rice sweets. Here you will find an article on mochi, daifuku and mochitsuki i.e. the tradition of preparing mochi for the celebration of the New Year.

Recipe for mochi and daifuku

Here is the general recipe for mochi and daifuku. It assumes the use of rice flour, not the mix of rice flour and boiled rice, which in my opinion is way easier. If you want to stuff the mochi cake – use your favourite ice-cream or fruit.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of sticky/glutinous rice flour (mochiko)
• 3/4 cup of warm water
• 1/2 cup of sugar (I used to add more but it was too sweet)
• starch (corn or potato)
• sweet red bean paste anko or ice-cream (preferably green tea ice-cream)

Preparation of mochi and daifuku

Traditional preparation of mochi is not difficult but time and energy consuming. This is why nowadays Japanese often use the machines to make omochi mass. Or – simply – buy a frozen mass (you can buy it in Japanese supermarkets). As I don’t have a proper machine (I assume you don’t have it either), I recommend to use a kitchen mixer with a bowl. Or you can simply mix the mass with spoon. This is the most simple way to prepare Japanese mochi or daifuku.

Mochi: Mix well the rice flour (mochiko) and water in a heat-proof bowl. If the mass is too dry, you can add additional spoon of water. Put the bowl on the top of the pot with boiling water and steam it under the cover for about 20 minutes (you can also use a steamer). After steaming, boil the rice mass with sugar in a pot over low or medium heat. You should dose sugar in three parts – each time wait for its melting. Be careful not to burn the sugar. When the mass is homogeneous and all the sugar is dissolved, let it cool down. Next, form balls, embracing them in powdered starch. The mochi are ready to eat! You can serve it with your favourite ice-cream on the side!

Daifuku: If you want to prepare daifuku, just make a bigger ball of mochi mass and stuff it with filling.

• To make classic daifuku fill it with anko (sweet paste of red azuki beans).
• To make fresh strawberry daifuku (ichigo daifuku), fill it with anko, cut it and place a strawberry inside.

• You can also fill mochi with ice-cream – you will have home made version of “Yukimi Daifuku”. If you want to get really Japanese taste, try to mix vanilla ice-cream with powdered matcha tea! You can also sprinkle it with matcha powder!

Extras

📖 Learn more about daifuku here.

🍵 Interested in matcha and Japanese tea ceremony? Read more and watch a video about the chakai tea meeting, I took part in, in tea pavilion in Himeji.

🍜 Want to learn more Japanese culinary terms? Then check my Japanese Food Index page I am expanding!

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