Funfetti birthday cake mochi has been a Asian American food mashup that I’ve been dreaming of for months. Luckily, summer is full of birthdays for our family and friends. What better way to celebrate than with a ball of colorful cake wrapped in soft, squishy mochi?
A little bit of wingin’ it…
For this recipe, you can use any cake recipe you like. I used leftover scraps of milkbar birthday cake because that’s what was in my kitchen. My own funfetti cake recipe is not posted yet, so stay tuned for that later. If you’re looking for a recipe, I recommend Sally’s Baking Addiction Funfetti Cake. You can also check out her cake pop recipe for how much frosting to add and how to form the cake into truffle balls. However, if you’ve seen my other daifuku recipes, you’ll know you only need SIX cake balls. That’s going to be no more than 6 cupcakes worth of cake, depending on how big your cupcakes are. To avoid waste or massive amounts of work, I recommend making cupcakes and just reserving six for this recipe.
On that note, depending on the recipe you use, you may need to add more or less frosting to get the cake balls to stick together. Remember that you can always add more frosting, but you can’t take frosting back out once you’ve mixed it in! Putting your cake balls in the fridge while you cook the mochi will also help it keep its form.
For the mochi making, check out my food glossary or other daifuku recipes if you’re confused about ingredients or technique. One last note – cooked mochi will get very hard and dry in the fridge, so please enjoy your daifuku the day you make them or keep them at room temperature in an air tight container.
Birthday Cake Mochi Daifuku
Ingredients
Birthday Cake Filling
- 1/2 recipe any 8" funfetti cake recipe, homemade or store bought; or enough for about 6 cupcakes
- 2 tbsp frosting*
Mochi
- 100 g shiratamako or mochiko
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 95 mL water
- 1/2 tsp almond or vanilla extract optional
- katakuriko for dusting (potato starch)
- sprinkles for decoration
Instructions
- Crumble and mash the birthday cake and frosting with your hands. Roll the crumbs into 6 golf ball sized balls. Cover and place in fridge, ideally for at least 30 minutes.
- Set up your steaming apparatus. I've used both a bamboo steamer over a pot of boiling water and a bowl on a steamer rack in a frying pan. Both work equally well.
- Mix shiratamako or mochiko with sugar and water.
- Steam mochi mixture for 15 minutes, covered, in whatever steamer you've set up.
- Scoop cooked mochi onto a surface dusted with katakuriko.
- Cut mochi into 6 equal pieces and roll each piece out into about a 3 inch circle, using katakuriko as needed to keep them from sticking.
- Take the cold birthday cake balls from the fridge. Wrap each ball in a circle of mochi, pinching the ends together to seal them shut. Dust with more katakuriko if needed.
- Pat rainbow sprinkles onto the tops of each daifuku. If sprinkles are not sticking, lightly mist the tops of each mochi with a spray bottle to make sticky again.
- Mochi should be eaten the day they are made. However, if your cake and frosting do not contain ingredients which can spoil, you can leave the mochi in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a day.
Notes
If you enjoyed this recipe, check out my strawberry rose daifuku or mint chocolate daifuku! And for a more beginner level mochi dessert, check out my butter mochi. Happy baking!