Ice Cream Mochi
Mochi ice cream is a delicious Japanese bite sized dessert. This recipe uses your favourite ice cream and wraps it in a chewy, subtly sweet mochi dough. Ice cream you can eat with your fingers!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup glutinous rice flour (94g)
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar (108g)
- 1/2 cup water (120mL)
- a few drops food coloring (optional)
- 2 cups Ice Cream of your choice
- Cornstarch or Potato Starch for dusting the dough and work surface
- Plastic wrap for wrapping each mochi ball
Instructions
Preparing the Ice Cream Balls
- Use a cookie scoop to scoop balls of your favourite ice cream. Be sure to pack the ice cream into the scoop so there are no air pockets and use a knife to wipe off the bottom edge so you will have a smooth flat surface.
- Place each ball of ice cream on a parchment lined baking sheet and chill in the freezer for 2 hours. See Note 1.
Making the Mochi Dough
- After 1 ½ hour of chilling your ice cream balls you can begin making your mochi dough. Place the glutinous rice flour and sugar in a mixing bowl. Stir to combine well.
- Add in the water and whisk until smooth. If using, add a few drops of food coloring and mix in.
- Cover the mixing bowl loosely with plastic wrap and microwave for 1 minute (I am using a 1460 Watt microwave, times may vary depending on the power of your microwave)
- Remove bowl and using a rubber spatula dipped in water (to prevent sticking) mix the ingredients. There will be some solids and still some liquid, just give it all a good mix.
- Cover with plastic wrap again and microwave for 30 seconds followed by another good mixing to bring the dough together into a ball with a wet rubber spatula spoon. Repeat with one more round of 30 seconds in the microwave and stirring.
- Place a large piece of parchment paper on the counter top and dust generously with cornstarch or potato starch.
- Pour mochi dough onto the parchment paper, dust the mochi with cornstarch and roll out until it is a little more than ¼ inch thick.
- Use a cookie/biscuit cutter about 3” diameter to cut out circles. Dust off excess cornstarch/potato starch with a dry pastry brush.
- Place each circle on an individual piece of plastic wrap. The size of the plastic wrap should be at least 7 inches by 7 inches or bigger. Stack the mochi dough with plastic wrap on top of each other and place on a small plate. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or the freezer for 10 minutes.
Assembling the Ice Cream Mochi
- Work with one mochi ice cream at a time. Best to keep the others in the freezer while you work. Take one mochi dough circle and place one of the ice cream scoops into the middle, upside down so the flat edge of the ice cream is facing upward. Bring the dough over the ice cream so that all the dough edges meet along the middle of the flat plane of the ice cream. Pinch the dough together to seal. If you have a lot of excess dough you can cut the excess with scissors so you don’t end up with a big blob of dough on the bottom.
- Bring plastic wrap over the mochi ice cream ball in the same way you wrapped the ice cream. Then tightly rotate the saran wrap around the flat side of the mochi ball so that it is tightly held by the plastic wrap. Place the plastic wrapped mochi ice cream ball back into the freezer to chill (flat side down as much as possible).
- Continue with the other ice cream balls until they are all done.
- Chill in the freezer for at least an hour to firm back up again.
- When ready to serve, bring the mochi ice cream out of the freezer for about 5 minutes before serving to soften a bit. Enjoy!
Notes
- Don’t skip chilling the ice cream balls after they have been scooped. The ice cream needs to be as cold and hard as possible when you wrap them in mochi so you don’t end up with melting ice cream oozing out, which will prevent you from being able to pinch the mochi closed. I once tried an ice cream that was just too soft no matter how long I let it sit in the freezer. Some additives in ice cream make it soft which is nice for serving on a pie or something, but not for wrapping mochi ice cream.
- Make sure the mochi dough is cold before trying to wrap around the ice cream ball. If it isn't cold, it will begin to melt the ice cream and it becomes very difficult to wrap.
- If the circle of dough is not big enough to wrap the ice cream you won't be able to bring the mochi dough together. If it needs to be a bit bigger you can work the edge with your fingers (ice cream should be back in the freezer) to just stretch the edge out a bit before wrapping. I have also found that when rolling the mochi out originally, I can leave it a little thicker than i want, then cut out my circles and roll each circle individually to get a larger circle than my cookie cutter.
- Having a little bowl of water nearby you can dip your fingers into to wet the mochi may help if you are having troubles getting it to stick together.
- If your mochi is too sticky and hard to work with, you can dip your fingers in cornstarch.
- For the best looking mochi don't re-use scraps of leftover dough. But you can gather the scraps and rework them if you want, they will just not be as smooth of a final product, as the cornstarch/potato starch begins to dry out the mochi too much. They still taste great, but don't look as nice.