Blueberry Mochi Cake

Blueberry Mochi Cake

Mochi (pronounced mo-chee) is one of my favorite Japanese foods on the planet. It is pounded special short-grain rice. I did a few posts about the plain New Year's mochi my family makes and the sweet Japanese confectioneries such as those sold by Sakuraya in Los Angeles.

In those tart frozen yogurt shops (such as Pinkberry, Tutti Fruitti and Yogurtland), you can get little mochi balls of goodness. They are perfect with frozen yogurt because they are chewy, sweet, and they don't harden against the cold yogurt (unlike those killer mini-gummy bears - I thought I was going to need dental work!)

Recently, I was gifted some Blueberry Mochi Cake by JustJenn. OMG. So delicious. I had to make it!

The key ingredient is the box of Mochiko (sweet rice flour) - it cannot be substituted. Really, no substitutions. I used Koda Farms Mochiko sweet rice flour (see their website for information about mochi and this California family owned Japanese American farm). You can find this in a Japanese, Asian, or health food store (it's gluten-free). Mine sells it for under $1.50 per box. Mochiko is made from special sweet short-grain rice and is very soft in texture. It will make the cake a bit chewy and, well, mochi-like!

This is more of a Mochi "cake" than mochi you might have seen in a Japanese store. Those are usually filled with sweetened beans (red or lima) and the outer mochi doesn't have a bunch of eggs and milk in it like this one.

Blueberry Mochi Cake

Adapted from JustJenn who adapted it from Hawaii's Best Mochi Recipes by Jean Watanabe Hee

1 pound mochiko (1 box)
1 cup butter (2 sticks), melted
2 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk (12 oz can)
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
12 oz frozen blueberries (or 1 can blueberry pie filling)

In a large bowl, combine (by hand) the sugar and melted butter. Add evaporated milk and mix well. Add eggs and mix. Finally, stir in baking powder, mochiko and vanilla.

After mixing the batter, I spread a thin layer in the 9 x 13 pan. Then I sprinkled some semi-thawed blueberries. Repeated a couple times. Or, you can mix it all together but the batter gets a little blue (nothing wrong with that!)

I used Trader Joe's Frozen Wild Blueberries. These blueberries are smaller and I ended up using 3/4 of the 12 oz. bag.

My new oven! See the temperature remained at 350 for the entire cycle! Yippee.
Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees until toothpick clean and golden brown.

Blueberry Mochi Cake

Not too sweet.
Slightly chewy.
Yummy blueberryness.
Gluten-free.
Try it out!