Hawaiian Butter Mochi

Every morning in Hawaii, Auntie Cathy left a pan of butter mochi out on the counter for us to enjoy.  Some days, it was cocoa mochi, some days it was blueberry mochi but my favorite was the regular butter mochi.

If you haven’t tried butter mochi, you are missing out.  Traditional mochi is a Japanese treat that is made from pounded rice.  It is soft and chewy and usually served stuffed with sweet beans (it is actually really good!), ice cream, and topped with flavors such as sesame.

This recipe isn’t like the regular mochi–instead of using mochi, it uses rice flour (Mochiko is my favorite brand).  The rice flour gives it a chewy texture and makes it gluten free!  In Hawaii, because of the Japanese influence, you see mochi used in a lot of things–mochi donuts, mochiko chicken, and, of course variations of butter mochi.

Cathy gave me a little Hawaiian cookbook so that I could continue to experiment with mochi at home.

I brought this to my office the other day with just a little note on it that read, “Gluten free but loaded with coconut, butter and eggs”.  Throughout the day, I watched people sneak by to grab more.  I gather from how quickly the plate was emptied that they liked it.

For this recipe, I added chocolate chips to half of the pan and not the other.  I think chocolate chips are good on everything.  And the mochi topped with coconut was super good too.  Go crazy and top the mochi with both chocolate chips and coconut!

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