Blueberry Mochi Cake

 The healthy recipe streak comes to a screeching halt with this blueberry mochi cake! We’ve got sticks of butter…cups of sugar… the whole shabang! I saw one of my friends post a picture of this cake online and I was intrigued. I asked for the recipe which was from Closet Cooking and made it the first chance I got. 

The recipe is really straightforward and requires simple ingredients. Besides having to go to an Asian supermarket to get Mochiko sweet rice flour (only $1.69), everything else I already had in my kitchen.

Got these beautiful juicy blueberries from a neighborhood market near my work. It was nice to get fresh fruit to bake with, I realize I usually only bake with fruit when they are about to go bad!

Start off by melting 2 sticks of butter (1 cup) on low heat in a pan. Then slowly stir in 2 cups of white sugar. Don’t let the sugar start caramelizing! Remove from heat as soon as butter is completely melted. Poured the butter/sugar mixture into my metal stand-mixer bowl and mixed in the rest of the wet ingredients: whole can of evaporated milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 4 eggs.

After adding 2 teaspoons of baking powder, I slowly incorporated the entire box of Mochiko and watched the batter thicken very quickly. Lastly I folded in 1 cup (+ a little bit more) of fresh blueberries.

A tip from my friend: line the pan with wax paper for super-easy clean up! The mochi has a very sticky texture so cleaning the pans would have been a pain.

The Before: baking in the oven for 1 whole hour! (So worth the wait!)

The After: Beautiful! Love the golden brown crust. I could barely wait for it to cool before I cut myself a piece. Adding the blueberries gave it a refreshing burst of flavor to the traditional Asian mochi dessert. This dessert is not too sweet (surprisingly considering the amount of sugar dumped into the batter) and has a great texture: chewy but not too sticky. I actually love the crunchier side pieces and absolutely love the thin sweet top layer. With a 9 x 13 cake I was able to cut the cake into a bunch of bite-size pieces to share and bring to other people, I already had two people ask me for the recipe!