Best Chocolate Mochi Recipe with Ganache Centre

Chocolate mochi is a chocolate filling covered in a soft, chewy layer of glutinous dough. Our recipe makes bite-sized confection that tastes like a combination of marshmallows and taffy. The outer part is a little sweet and has an earthy flavour from the glutinous rice with a rich chocolaty centre that melts in your mouth. 

Our chocolate mochi recipe is a spin on the traditional Japanese rice cake and uses a creamy chocolate ganache as the filling. If you want a softer chocolate cream, you can replace our ganache filling with this. You can even add a strawberry inside, too. While these two fillings are a bit harder for a beginner to wrap inside a daifuku, we'll give you some tips to do this at home.

This wagashi is a modernised version of daifuku inspired by chocolate truffles and more suited to a Western palate. As tasty as the classic red bean daifuku is, this chocolaty centre is a dreamy experience for chocoholics.

Jump to:

• Chocolate Daifuku Ingredients
• Chocolate Mochi Recipe
• Cooking Tips
• How To Store
• Popularity
• Calories

Chocolate Daifuku Ingredients

To make our chocolate mochi recipe, you'll need the following ingredients.

Creamy ganache filling:

• Chocolate
• Unsalted Butter
• Heavy cream

Mochi dough:

• Cocoa powder
• Mochiko (Glutinous rice flour)
• Sugar (optional)
• Milk (or water)

We'll discuss these ingredients in more detail and also explain what you can substitute to make our chocolate mochi recipe vegan. Unlike cakes, this little piece of heaven is not too sweet, yet it is enough to satisfy a sugary craving. However, by using our chocolate mochi recipe, you can further tweak the bittersweet balance of our dessert.

Chocolate

You are free to choose any chocolate you want as the filling. Milk or white chocolate will make the dessert sweeter. However, dark chocolate is richer in taste and better for a vegan chocolate mochi recipe.

For our recipe, we're using dark chocolate with 52% cocoa, as we love the bittersweetness. However, if you're trying to mimic Japanese chocolate mochi, then use Valrhona chocolate. We know many Tokyo patisseries love this brand.

Mochiko Flour

Mochiko flour is Japanese glutinous rice flour with the best soft and chewy dough texture. However, you can also make this scratch using glutinous rice for a chunkier texture or glutinous rice flour as a substitute.

Glutinous rice flour is typically more accessible outside of Japan and cheaper.

Milk (or Water)

Adding milk to your dough mixture will give it a creamier and softer texture. However, you can also use water to replace it. We recommend adding a smaller amount of water compared to milk when you're making the dough. Then, slowly increase it in 1 - 2 tablespoon increments to avoid a runny mixture that doesn't turn into a dough.

Cocoa powder

This is an essential ingredient to add more cocoa goodness to the skin of your wagashi. Natural cocoa powder will work great for our recipe.

Unsalted Butter and Heavy Cream

Unsalted butter gives your ganache a smooth, creamy, and rich taste. Meanwhile, heavy cream gives the ganache a silky texture and adds richness. The liquid also keeps the ganache from completely solidifying at room temperature. 

However, you can replace both components with coconut milk to make our filling vegan. It will function similarly to heavy cream and create a softer filling.

Sugar

This adds a little more sweetness to your chewy treat. If you're using milk or white chocolate for the filling. You can also use other sweeteners to sweeten up your dessert.

Cooking Tips

The most time-consuming part of our recipe is waiting for the ganache to chill and solidify. Based on our experience, this usually takes about 4 hours. So, to save some time, we recommend preparing the filling a few days before. 

How to get more even fillings

You can use a melon baller instead of a spoon to create round balls for the filling, giving your treat a more uniform shape. If you don't have this, you can scoop the filling onto plastic wrap and shape it into a ball. Both methods will make scooping the ganache into a ball easier.

Avoid touching the ganache directly, especially when placing the ganache ball at the mochi's centre. Otherwise, the ganache might melt and prevent the mochi from sticking.

Using a soft chocolate cream filling

You can use a soft chocolate cream filling for our mochi recipe. However, this usually requires more work to wrap the dough for beginners. The easiest way to work with softer fillings is by rolling out the dough to flatten it and working with a smaller amount of the filling. Less is more.

We've also added it to a piping bag rather than spooning it onto dough so it's easier to control its amount and placement.

Adding strawberries

We love adding a whole strawberry into our Japanese rice cakes. Similar to our red bean and strawberry daifuku recipe, you will first need to cover the strawberry with your paste.

You will use the chocolate ganache filling as a paste for this recipe. Using a ganache filling that's slightly hardened in the fridge, you can place it on some plastic wrap and press a strawberry in the centre.

Then, slowly close and wrap the plastic around the strawberry with chocolate. Let this sit further in the fridge, and take it when you're ready to use in your mochi dough. 

How To Store

If you plan on eating this indulgent treat within a day, store it in an airtight container in a cool room. However, keeping it in the fridge can save it for another day.

This process will solidify the ganache. If you still want it creamy, microwave it for a few seconds. Otherwise, the daifuku would still taste excellent with solidified ganache.

Popularity

Ever since daifuku became popular, chocolate daifuku has been a favourite worldwide. We can all see how it became a best-selling menu item in Japan, especially in Asian supermarkets and Japanese restaurants such as Yo Sushi.

In Japan, mochi is more than just a sweet treat. It is also a symbol of good fortune. Today, this versatile wagashi comes in various flavours. It is eaten daily as a sweet Japanese snack or dessert.

Mochi ice cream is another fantastic rendition that has overtaken the world. One of our favourite flavours is chocolate mochi ice cream.

Calories

Our little decadent dessert contains about 200 calories per serving. So, it is quite calorie-dense per bite. However, you can lower the calories by using a smaller filling instead.

Try making this Japanese dessert this weekend and share your results by tagging us on Instagram @honestfoodtalks. We would love to see how they turned out.

Next, check out how to make our nutty, vanilla Japanese-style taro mochi.