Mochi Ice cream (Inspired by the movie Inside Out)
We are in the dog days of summer and what’s better on a hot summer day than ice cream? Mochi ice cream of course! Mochi ice cream is a popular Japanese dessert that is basically ice cream wrapped in a thin chewy mochi shell. Creamy cold ice cream paired with soft chewy mochi makes for the perfect summertime treat. It’s a perfect little package. Where we live, it’s actually very easy to find this dessert in grocery stores and dessert shops but sometimes the ice cream flavors are limited and they can be rather expensive too. Making them at home is easy, requires very few ingredients, and you can add any flavor of ice cream you desire. It’s a fun cooking project to do with the kids too!
For this dessert, we decided to turn our mochi ice cream balls into characters from the Pixar movie, Inside Out. The characters actually inspired our ice cream flavor choices. We chose mango sorbet for Joy, ube (purple sweet potato) ice cream for Sadness, and green tea ice cream for Disgust. Since each character is so colorful and have such big personalities, we wanted the ice cream to be just as vibrant.
Making this dessert at home is easy if you follow these tips:
- Put your baking trays and any plates you will be using into the freezer before you start. If you are making these on a hot day like we were, you’ll want to keep the environment nice and cold so the ice cream doesn’t melt too quickly while you are handling it.
- Work FAST! Make sure the ice cream balls are frozen and try to handle the ice cream as quickly as possible.
- Use a generous amount of cornstarch. The mochi is STICKY!
In order to make our Inside out characters we needed to make several batches of mochi. Luckily, each batch took only 2 1/2 minutes in the microwave to make. To decorate each character, we made extra batches of mochi for the hair. We rolled out the dough and used a ring cutter to cut the dough. Then we draped the dough onto the mochi ball and trimmed it with food scissors to form the hair line.
Next, we piped melted chocolate details onto baking paper and attached them to the mochi balls with a little bit of water. We tried piping the chocolate directly onto the mochi ball but because the mochi was so cold, the chocolate hardened too quickly
We used a stencil to cut out small ovals of mochi for the nose and attached them to the mochi ball.
Et Voila! A refreshing summer treat in the shape of some of the biggest personalities from Pixar. Making the mochi ice cream was not hard but decorating these cuties definitely took a while. We were happy with the results though and our kids loved looking at each one before happily gobbling up these treats. Hope you are having a wonderful summer. Stay cool!
Mochi Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 6-8 scoops ice cream Any flavor you desire
- 1/2 cup sweet rice flour Mochiko brand works well but you can also use glutinous rice flour
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup sugar
- corn stach for dusting
- food coloring for decorating
Instructions
- Scoop out ice cream into rounds balls and place them into cupcake tin to maintain their round shape. Place cupcake tin into freezer and let ice cream harden for 1 hour.
- Prepare mochi by combining rice flour and water in a bowl. Stir until well incorporated.
- Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Add food coloring here if using for decoration. Stir until well incorporated.
- Microwave mochi mixture for 2 minutes.
- Take out mochi from microwave and stir so that it doesn't burn. Then microwave for another 30 seconds to finish cooking.
- Mochi is done when it is shiny and transparent and very sticky.
- Turn your mochi dough out onto a cornstarch dusted surface (Be very generous with the cornstarch!). Dust the top of the mochi dough with more corn starch.
- Roll out the dough using a rolling pin until you have a nice rectangular thin layer of mochi.
- Cut mochi dough into 6-8 pieces (depending on the size of your mochi ball) and place each piece onto a square piece of plastic wrap.
- Place your thin squares of mochi into the refrigerator an let them chill for about 30 minutes.
- When you are ready to make your mochi balls, take one mochi dough and ice cream ball out of the fridge/freezer. Quickly place each ice cream ball into the center of a square of mochi and wrap the dough over the ice cream, pinching the dough to seal it. If there is excess dough, you can cut it off with scissors. Using the plastic wrap, wrap up your mochi ball and place in the freezer for at least 1 hour to over night.
