These calico cat mochi begins with a soft and chewy exterior dough made of glutinous rice flour. Followed by a delicious combination of strawberries and whipped cream. Then finish this off with some cute cat details and you’ve got a treat that’s almost too cute to eat!

These strawberry mochi are a perfect snack or dessert that’s sure to brighten up your day!

want to see more cute mochis? Check out my Oreo mochi!

What is mochi?

Mochi is a rice cake that is made with glutinous rice flour. They are soft and chewy and can be filled with a variety of fillings.

How to make mochi

Mochi making consists of 3 basic steps:

Making the mochi dough
Making the mochi filling
Assembly

Making the mochi dough

Mochi is made out of glutinous rice flour. Please make sure the rice flour is GLUTINOUS rice flour and not regular rice flour. The mochi will not turn out well if you use regular rice flour. Unfortunately, there are no substitutions for glutinous rice flour.

You will need 5 ingredients to make the mochi dough:

glutinous rice flour
cornstarch
sugar
milk
butter

Mix everything together. In a bowl, add glutinous rice flour, corn starch, sugar, and milk. Mix everything together and then strain the mixture by putting it through a mesh sieve. This ensures you don’t have any clumps of flour in the mochi.
Microwave. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and poke some holes into the plastic wrap. You can use a toothpick or a knife to do this. Microwave it until it is cooked. This takes about 2 minutes. You know it is cooked when it has turned into a solid consistency.
Add the butter. The dough will be very hot at this point. The butter will start to melt as soon as you add it in. Use a rubber spatula and mix everything together.
Knead the dough. Once the dough has cooled enough to touch, knead the dough until it can be stretched without breaking. The dough does start off rather greasy from the butter but it will turn into a beautiful consistency as you continue to knead.
Dye the dough. Dye some brown and orange dough for the calico cats.

Making the mochi filling

This mochi is filled with whipped cream and strawberries.

To make the whipped cream, add cream and sugar (and optional vanilla extract) into a bowl and mix until stiff peaks. Transfer the whipped cream into a piping bag.
Cut the strawberries into small pieces

Assembly

Prepare your work surface by sprinkling it with some cooked glutinous rice flour. (Cook the glutinous rice flour by heating the flour in a pan on low heat for a few minutes until it changes in color slightly)

Take a piece of white dough and flatten it out a bit
Press on bits of orange and brown dough. This will make the calico cat pattern
Flip the dough over and roll it out. (tip: make sure both sides of the dough are covered in some glutinous rice flour to prevent sticking while rolling it out)
Place the dough into a bowl
Pipe whipped cream inside the dough along the edges
Fill with strawberries and then pipe more whipped cream on top to cover the strawberries.
Wrap up the dough and cut off any excess dough.

TIP:

Knead the dough on a silicon mat. The dough won’t stick to the silicon mat.

The dough was very sticky when I tried to knead it in the bowl and on my table top. It was a huge mess. Then I switched to a silicon mat and no stickage at all!

Decorating

There are two methods you can make the ears on the mochi:

Pinch up some dough to form the ears.
Make the ears out of mochi dough.

Pipe on the cat face with melted chocolate.