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Little Moons have taken over social media and Aldi’s own version of mochi ice cream balls are flying off the shelves faster than they can be restocked. It’s official: mochi ice cream balls are the sweet treat of summer 2021.
Their popularity got us wondering; How easy are they to make at home? And how do homemade mochi ice cream balls compare to the real deal?
If you’re having a hard time getting hold of them or you just want something impressive to serve at your next picnic or outdoor function, we’re on hand to help. We love a bit of baking here at Best Buys (case in point: here's our in-depth review of the KitchenAid stand mixer), so it made sense for our editorial team to get stuck in (literally) and start experimenting with making our own mochi ice cream balls.
To find the recipe, scroll down the page; you'll also find first-hand tips and advice in our step-by-step guide and verdict. But first; we’re answering all your frequently-asked questions about mochi ball ice cream.
Mochi (pronounced moe-chee) ice cream is a pretty simple concept. The Japanese dessert is essentially just scoops of ice cream or sorbet wrapped up in a sweet rice flour dough. When it’s frozen, the dough forms a sort of chewy shell around the ice cream and gives you a nice contrast of textures when you bite into it.
The dough can be flavoured or plain, and the flavour can match the flavour of the ice cream filling or have a complementary flavour. Unlike any other type of ice cream-based dessert, you need to rest the mochi ice cream balls out of the freezer for about five minutes before serving.
Mochi ice cream was invented in the early 1990’s by Frances Hashimoto, a Japanese-American businesswoman and community activist. Her family owned and operated a Japanese confectionery business called Mikawaya in Los Angeles in 1910, but it was forced to close its doors at the outbreak of World War II.
It eventually reopened, and Hashimoto is largely credited with the success and expansion of the business, including spearheading the US market and introducing Japanese sweet treats to a wider audience. Mochi ice cream now represents the majority of Mikawaya's annual sales.
Unfortunately, the original Mikawaya mochi ice cream balls are not yet available to purchase in the United Kingdom. In the UK, the most common place to find mochi ice cream is at Tesco, where they’re sold under the Little Moons brand. You can find them in the freezer aisle, but you’ll need to move fast; they sell out very quickly!
You can also buy Little Moons at Ocado, and you might be able to avoid the dreaded out-of-stock label if you're flexible about delivery times- and Ocado make it super easy to find a slot that suits you.
Luckily, Aldi has also just answered our prayers with the introduction of My/Mo mochi. The flavours are pretty similar to Little Moons and each product comes in a pack of six, like Little Moons.
The most common flavours are green tea, coconut, pistachio, mango and passion fruit, raspberry and lemon. You can also get richer flavours like chocolate and salted caramel. Some are vegan and are more sorbet-like and others are full-fat dairy. Judging by the fact it’s always sold out, passion fruit seems to be the most popular flavour.
Sweet rice flour, also known as glutinous rice flour, is the key ingredient needed to make the dough that wraps around the ice cream. It’s a speciality type of flour that’s very soft and starchy. Contrary to its name, it’s actually 100% gluten-free; it’s called glutinous because of its incredibly sticky texture.The main selling point of sweet rice flour is its stickiness and you’d be hard-pressed to find any other type of flour as sticky as this stuff. Seriously; this stuff is like heavy-duty glue.
It’s not to be confused with regular rice flour which is not the same thing at all. Don’t substitute regular rice flour for sweet rice flour because it simply won’t work. Sweet rice flour is hard to get hold of unless you have a well-stocked Asian shop in your area, but we bought ours from Amazon and it arrived the next day (thanks, Prime) and there was more than enough to make mochi balls for years to come.
That recipe above comes courtesy of Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Bakes. We chose it because it looks simple, straightforward and easy to do with minimal tools. This all turned out to be true, but there are a couple of things we discovered first-hand when we had a go at this ourselves.
Grab a baking sheet and line it with greaseproof (or parchment) paper. If you don’t have a baking sheet or you’re only making a few mochi balls, you can use a plate big enough to fit in your freezer. Then, you’ll need an ice cream scoop if you want to make big mochi balls, or a smaller egg spoon if you want your dessert to look more like Little Moons.
The recipe says that all you need to do is scoop up the ice cream as you usually would and place it on the parchment paper - but when we tried this, it led to half-spheres that looked a bit misshapen. The best method we found is to get a big fat chunk of ice cream or sorbet on your spoon or scoop, then use your fingers to press it in. Once transferred to the parchment paper after using this method, the balls looked much healthier and more round.
You don’t need to worry too much about where you place them on the parchment paper and you don’t need to leave too much room between them, either. As soon as you’re done, get them straight in the freezer to make sure you don’t have any melty bits.
Measure out 160g rice flour into a microwaveable bowl and add 225ml of water. Mix with a whisk or a fork. It might look a little lumpy, but those lumps will smooth out in time. Stick your concoction in the microwave for 60 seconds.
Remove and whisk for a second time. Make sure the mixture has the chance to cool properly before putting it back into the microwave for another minute. At this point, it should look like a thick, opaque white paint but it’ll have a thin, watery texture. That’s all right - just trust the process.
For the final time, place your mixture back in the microwave, this time for just 30 seconds. When it’s done, it should look like a glossy, sticky dough. Remove and stir again but this time with a wet plastic spatula or wooden spoon - it’ll immediately stick to a metal whisk or fork. Add your colours or flavours here. If you’re making more than colour or flavour, you’ll need to divide the dough evenly into three different bowls and add the flavours and colours separately.
Now that you should have a dough that’s both pretty and tasty (or plain, if that’s your thing), it’s time to roll it out. Lay down a fresh sheet of parchment paper onto a work surface and sprinkle generously with cornflour. You will need more cornflour than you think so use it liberally! Coat your rolling pin with cornflour as well. If you don’t have a rolling pin, you can use any object that’s long and cylindrical - this article offers some good household alternatives for rolling pins.
Your dough will try to stick to the rolling pin and it’ll be a bit of a battle to get it laying flat (use more cornflour). Once you’ve nailed the thickness (check out the verdict below for more on this), transfer to a baking sheet (or wide plate) with the parchment paper still attached. Repeat for any other dough flavours you might have.
The final step in the dough-making process is moving all the dough sheets to the fridge (not the freezer!). The recipe says you should let the dough chill for at least thirty minutes, but we advise leaving it in for as long as possible. We actually left ours overnight, and it turned out beautifully.
The next thing you’re going to want to do is cut your dough into circles. You need to eye up your scoops of ice cream and work out how much dough you’ll need to wrap around them, then find a pastry cutter that matches that size.
Glass ramekins, jam jars and wine glasses are good options for getting the right size dough circle, but it’ll vary a lot based on how large your ice cream balls are. Cookie cutters will only work if you’ve made quite small ice cream scoops.
The next step is semi-optional, but we recommend it. Cut your dough into balls using whatever cutter you’re using and then put them back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You want the dough to be as cold as possible when it wraps around the ice cream, otherwise it’ll dissolve into a sticky mess.
With your circles of dough ready, take your ice cream out and start wrapping the dough around them, working very quickly. Before you wrap each one, dust off any excess cornflour. You want to take the roundest, prettiest side of the ice cream and put that down into the dough first, leaving any flat or misshapen bits on the side that you’re going to seal. This way any imperfections won’t be visible from the top.
The sealing bit is incredibly difficult and we’re convinced there’s no trick to it - you just need to make the two sides of the dough meet and then smush it together with your fingers as best you can.
You’re going to want to put each mochi ball into a cling film wrap so that it retains the shape. Then, the recipe recommends that you transfer each one into a muffin tray or egg box. We used a normal plate because we didn’t have enough space in an egg box and they turned out just fine.
Leave to set for at least two hours - or they can be stored for up to one week in the freezer. Before serving, you want to let them sit out in the open air for at least five minutes before letting people tuck in.
Taste? 10/10. Effort? 10/10. Presentation? 5/10 might actually be too generous. Listen, we generally consider ourselves to be good and patient bakers who aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty and always follow new recipes to a tee. But the stickiness of the dough and its refusal to wrap around the scoops of ice cream scoops left us scratching our heads.
We did eventually manage to put a few ice cream balls together that looked semi Instagram-worthy, but we can’t quite work out where we went wrong with the rest. If we were going to do this again, we’d make the dough a little bit thicker and we wouldn’t be so heavy-handed with our colours and flavours, as it’s possible they had more of an effect on the texture than we thought they would.
Prices updated on 27/05/2021. We are not responsible for any changes on the prices mentioned above.
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