Matcha Green Tea Mochi
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m quite obsessed with mochi and with matcha flavored things. While I’ve made quite a few mochi cakes, such as strawberry mochi cake, blueberry mochi cake, cherry mochi cake and pumpkin mochi cake, I’ve never made the traditional mochi.
A few years ago, I saw a recipe for making mochi that seemed really simple and fast and just required the use of a microwave. I put it on my mental list of things I wanted to try making at some point. After I began baking with matcha green tea powder, I came up with the idea of making green tea flavored mochi and stuffing it with the traditional red bean paste.
I was able to buy the red bean paste at Ranch 99. You can probably find it at your local Asian market. They come in cans and also in the plastic packages, which is what I ended up buying.
So I bought my mochiko flour and my red bean paste a while back, and every week I said I was going to try making the mochi. And of course, it didn’t happen. Then I found a post on green tea mochi with red bean paste filling on My Kitchen Snippets. This is exactly what I wanted to make! And the recipe even used the microwave to cook the mochi flour too. Seeing this post gave me the push I needed to finally try making my own mochi.
The dessert was very fast to make. In fact, you have to be fast in order to work with the mochi while it is still hot and you can mold it and pinch it together. It is hard to work with such a hot ingredient though and you have to be careful not to burn your hand.
Matcha Green Tea Mochi
Ingredients
- 1 cup Mochiko glutinous rice flour
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp green tea powder
- 2/3 cup water
- Red bean paste
- Cornstarch/potato starch/or tapioca starch – for dusting
Instructions
- Take red bean paste and roll it into balls approximately 1/2 inch in diameter. (If you like a lot of bean paste in yours, you can make thicker balls. I personally only like a little bit of filling, so I made my balls smaller. Make about 8 balls.
- In a microwave safe bowl, mix together mochiko glutinous rice flour, sugar, green tea and water. Mix well.
- Microwave the mixture on high for two minutes. Remove and stir quickly. Return to the microwave and cook for another 1 1/2 minutes. I had to play around with the timing of this for a while. The first time I overcooked the mochi and it was too hard.
- Scoop up a little more than one tablespoon of dough. Dust a plate or counter top with either cornstarch, tapioca starch or potato starch.
- Dust your fingers and palms with starch and flatten a piece of dough while it is still hot and put in the filling, then wrap dough around the filling and seal the opening with a tight pinch. Try to shape dough into a smooth round ball. Repeat until all dough is used up. Let the mochi cool before serving.
Been using this recipe since 2013. Burn my fingers every time, but it’s worth it.
We’re so glad you love this recipe!! You can try using food safe gloves to prevent burning yourself
i was gonna make matcha but i couldn’t find it so i made it without and added a splash of vanilla. softest. most delicious most refreshing tasting mochi i used a different brand of glutinous rice flour i loved it
We’re so glad you loved this recipe!!
Hi! I purchased matcha Mochi packaged from a grocery store out of curiosity. The brand is Formosa Yay. Is this Mochi okay to just eat as is? I don’t know much about it, but I know I like the frozen Mochi products. This particular product is stored dry on the shelf.
Yes the mochi can be eaten as is. This is the more traditional form of mochi.
Use chunky peanut butter for the filling and mix 4T Kinako and 4T sugar together to dust the outside of the Green Tea Mochi filled with peanut butter aka ‘The Bomb’
thanks!
Hi Kirbie! I just found your blog off foodgawker and am bookmarking almost every asian inspired sweet recipe I see! I love mochi too and this post has inspired me to finally try making them myself with the glutinous rice flour that has bee sitting in my pantry for way too long…
Thanks for your inspiration and keep up the decicious posts!
yay! glad you found my site! mochi is really easy to make, especially the mochi cake recipes I have, where you just mix everything in a mixer and pour and bake.
How long was the mochi good for? Meaning, did it start to harden if it wasnt eaten within the day?
It was still fine the next day. I didn’t let them sit any longer beyond that since I only made a few. Just don’t put it in the fridge because it will harden the mochi.
Hi Kat! I’m always happy to hear from new readers. I’m surprised that Florida doesn’t offer more Japanese and Chinese food. I don’t know if you saw, but I have a couple of different mochi recipes on here. The mochi cakes are really easy to make and can keep for a few days and taste as yummy as these smaller individual mochi. If you can find some glutinous rice flour, you’ll be all set to make your own yummy treats!
I found your blog via facebook and I’m so happy I did. I LOVE mochi and where I live now I can’t seem to find it (when I lived in Columbus Ohio I could get all sorts of amazing Japanese and Chinese food all over but in Florida that seems near impossible) so I’m super happy to have this recipe now. Your blog makes me so hungry!
I would suggest to try cooking it a little longer. The dough is very sticky, but it shouldn’t be that soft. If you put the starch powder on your hands, then it should be easier to work with the dough so it doesn’t stick to your hands. I think if the dough is still really soft, then perhaps it hasn’t been cooked long enough. When mine was done, it was hard to stir. To shape it, I just grabbed a chunk, flattened it so it was already kind of round, then placed the filling in, and then just wrapped the edges together and pinched it close. It was already pretty round at this point and then I just sort of squished it to look more like a round ball and less like an oval-shape.
Mine is like 1600. So I readjusted the cooking time and somehow the mochi was very soft and sticky, plus very difficult to be formed in ball shape. I guess it needs to be cooked longer or place in the fridge?
Hm, I think my microwave is 1100. Hope you enjoy the recipe!
Red bean is my favorite filling in mochi! Can’t wait to read about the rest of your Taiwan trip.
Thanks for the post! I would love to try making them. They look delicious. One question: How strong / many kilowatts is your microwave? So that I can adjust the cooking time accordingly… Thanks. =)
Love the red bean filling of these lovely morsels! Yummy!
Yes, thanks for catching that. I’ve changed it on the post.
“Let the mochi cook before serving.”
Do you mean to let it “cool?”