Warabi Mochi – vegan, gluten free recipe

This chewy, soft, sweet, and jiggly warabi mochi could be the easiest Japanese mochi you can make at home.

You will only need 3 ingredients to make the mochi cake: water, sugar, and warabi starch.

Paired with our homemade brown sugar syrup and the classic roasted soybean powder, this 15-minute dessert can take your taste buds on a quick trip to Japan.

What is Warabi Mochi?

Warabi mochi (蕨餅), is a chewy and chilled Japanese dessert, which is traditionally made from bracken starch, dusted with roasted soybean powder, and drizzled with brown sugar syrup. 

Different from daifuku mochi that we are all familiar with, which is made from glutinous rice flour, authentic warabi mochi requires a very special ingredient – bracken starch (or warabi starch) – for a special refreshing and jelly-like taste.

Warabi starch / bracken starch

The plant in this picture below is warabi, which is a very commonly seen weeds in rural Japan and China.

When I was a child, I always enjoyed collecting wild warabi with my mom on our spring hiking. My mom would make stir fry warabi or warabi soup for dinner. 

Although warabi is very easy to grow, it’s hard to be found in the US. Maybe it’s because dandelions have took over every inch of the ground that warabi has no place to grow. 😜

And according to Just One Cookbook, warabi starch “is expensive because it’s difficult to harvest” – only about “5%” of the roots can actually become starch. What’s more, the process steps are “very time consuming”.

Therefore, nowadays warabi mochi is frequently made with potato starch or tapioca starch instead of warabi starch.

Some tips for making Warabi Mochi

1. Make brown sugar syrup – brown sugar: water  = 1:1. 

You can easily make brown sugar syrup by boiling 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of water until thicken and sticky. The whole process will only take about 3 minutes.

P.S. – If you are making brown sugar syrup for drinks, such as brown sugar boba tea or brown sugar coffee, you can mix brown sugar and water at a ratio of 1:2. We will want the syrup to be thinner for drinks, and thicker for mochi and pancakes. 

2. Use warabi starch

Although it’s very common for people to use potato starch or tapioca starch to substitute warabi starch in this recipe, the taste and texture won’t be the same. 

How do I know it?

Because I tried to make warabi mochi with tapioca starch, and it’s so hard to chew or swallow. Although tapioca mochi and warabi mochi won’t look significantly different, warabi mochi has a more refreshing taste and softer texture.

Tapioca dough is much chewier, that’s why we usually make it smaller into tapioca pearls, instead of large mochi pieces.

3. Stir constantly until transparent

Warabi mochi is super easy to make: you add all the warabi mochi ingredients to a pot, stir over medium-low heat constantly until it turns into a half-transparent mochi dough.

• Firstly the mixture will look like milk.

• As it’s heated, the mixture will turn lumpy. Now it’s time to switch your whisk with a rubber spatula. 

• The mixture will gradually turn smooth and half-transparent as it’s cooked.
• Now you can turn off the heat, keep stirring and and let the residual heat to cook the dough until there’s no white part and the whole piece of the dough turns clear.

4. Cool with ice bath

Different from a tapioca starch dough, warabi mochi will turn hard in the fridge. 

Therefore, an ideal method is to cool down the dough with an ice bath for about 3 minutes. In this way the mochi will be chilled overall and still be soft inside. 

EQUIPMENT you will need:

• 1 Nonstick saucepan

• 1 Rubber spatula

 

INGREDIENTS for making warabi mochi:

– To make Brown sugar syrup

• ¼ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup water

– To make Warabi Mochi

• 1 cup water
• ¼ cup cane sugar
• ½ cup warabi starch

– For the Dusting

• ¼ cup roasted soybean powder (classic)

• ¼ cup matcha powder (optional)

Step by Step INSTRUCTIONS:

– To Make Brown Sugar Syrup

1. Add ¼ cup of brown sugar and ¼ cup of water to a saucepan, heat over medium heat.

2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, keep it boiling for about 1 minute until it’s sticky and thicken.

3. Transfer the syrup to a container, set aside to cool down.

– To Make Warabi Mochi

1. Dust a plate with ¼ cup of roasted soybean powder and/or ¼ cup of matcha powder. Filling a large bowl with ice and water. Set aside.

2. Add 1 cup of water, ¼ cup of cane sugar, and ½ cup of warabi starch to a nonstick pot. Stir with a whisk until dissolved.

3. Cook the mixture over medium-low heat, stir constantly with a rubber spatula. The mixture will turn white and lumpy first, then turn thicken and smooth, and lastly turn half-transparent. The whole thickening process will take about 8 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat. Transfer the warabi mochi dough into the iced water. Leave the mochi dough submerged in the ice water bath for 3 minutes.

5. Pinch off a small piece of dough (about a ping pong ball size), put it on the dusted plate. Repeat until all the mochi dough has been transferred to the plate.

6. Evenly coat each piece of warabi mochi with roasted soybean powder or matcha powder, transfer to a serving plate.

7. Drizzle with brown sugar syrup just before serving.

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