Alana’s Halva Butter Mochi is a sticky, chewy, fusion sweet treat flavored with pistachio and raspberry. With three different flavored batters swirled together, the layers of color and flavor are delightful on the eye and the tastebuds! Serve with hot lemon tea or black coffee.
Community Recipes is a recurring feature where we share your recipes on the Jewish Food Hero blog. If you want to share a recipe in this series, pitch us your idea here. This series is all about sharing Kosher recipes. We are creating a positive community around food and sharing.
You can find me on Instagram @chow.by.chandler.
Tell us about your passion project
I am working on a non-profit community cookbook called Tlaim: The Patchwork Cookbook, which aims to celebrate the ethnic, cultural, and racial diversity of the global Jewish community. We welcome folks to submit recipes and learn more on our website: globaljews.org/projects/tlaim. We encourage people to submit family recipes and anything casual they enjoy eating. We want submitters to help us redefine what Jewish food is; we believe that if you identify as Jewish and love cooking a certain recipe, that counts as Jewish food!
You can also connect with me on Instagram @chow.by.chandler.
Tell us about your connection with Judaism.
Judaism for me is culture, heritage, and ritual.
How do you express your values in your home through your kitchen?
I love to share my baked goods with my friends, because what is the point of baking if you can’t share the joy with others 😀 I try to cook with minimal animal products when possible, and thus like to experiment with vegan baking although I am not vegan myself.
What three food items could you not live without?
Broccoli, rice, Granny Smith apples
What is your best food tip?
After making a large batch of rice, I like to wrap up 1 cup portions in plastic wrap and store them in my freezer. Any time you want to eat a portion of rice, microwave the packet for 2 mins, and you have rice as good as freshly cooked! I prefer this storage method rather than keeping it in my fridge where it spoils.
What are your 2-3 go-to cookbooks?
I love the graphics in “First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home” by Frankie Gaw.
The interviews that go alongside recipes in “In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean” are really fascinating.
Tell us the story of your Halva Butter Mochi Recipe
I created this recipe when daydreaming what new iterations I could make with butter mochi. Butter mochi is a rich, chewy dessert that hails from Hawaii. It is said to have been born out of influences from Japanese and Filipino immigrants to the island.
This mochi is lightly infused with flavors from the type of halva you find in American delis and Jewish food aisles: sesame, honey, pistachio and raspberry. As a Japanese American Jewish person, I love making fusion recipes, borrowing ingredients from both sides of my heritage.
For the jam:
500g Raspberries
100g sugar
For the Mochi:
4 eggs
500g almond milk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
110g tahini
270g water
475g white granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp fine salt
450g glutinous rice flour (NOT just rice flour, must be glutinous)
115g unsalted butter, melted
50g finely crushed salted pistachios (You can place them in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin, or pulse them lightly in a food processor)
2 tbsp matcha green tea powder
150g raspberry jam
45g honey
Make the raspberry jam:
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Place raspberries in a saucepan set over medium-high heat and mash. Stir occasionally to prevent the raspberries on bottom from burning.
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Once the raspberries turn to a liquid mash and begin to bubble, lower the heat to medium low.
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Add 100g of sugar and continue to cook down until a thick jam forms.
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Chill and store in fridge for up to 5 days if not making mochi immediately.
Make the butter mochi:
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Preheat oven to 350 F.
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In a large bowl, mix together eggs, almond milk, vanilla, tahini and water. Once combined, stir in sugar.
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In a separate large bowl, combine baking powder, salt, and glutinous rice flour. Mix until uniform.
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Pour in ½ of wet ingredients into dry, and stir until a smooth, thick batter forms with no clumps. (This will be a good arm workout!)
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Gradually add in the remainder of the wet ingredients to form a thin, silky batter. Pour in melted butter and stir into batter.
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In a medium bowl, mix together matcha and crushed pistachios. Gradually add in ⅓ of batter.
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In a separate medium bowl, place in raspberry jam and gradually incorporate ⅓ of original batter.
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To the ⅓ of original batter remaining in larger bowl, stir in the honey.
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To swirl batters, pour the pistachio batter on one side of the original batter in the large bowl, and the raspberry batter on the other side. Slice through the middle of the batter with a spatula and run the spoon around the bowl’s edges – do this motion 2-3 times maximum. Do NOT overmix, or else the batters will mix into an odd color!
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Pour the batter into a square 9×9” pan and top with crushed pistachios. Bake in oven for 1 hour or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
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Cool to room temperature before cutting and top with honey to serve.
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Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week, and reheat in the oven before eating.
Keywords: mochi, pistachio, raspberry, dessert, fusion
More Community Recipes
Jewish Food Hero’s Community Recipes feature is a space for us all to share our favorites and hear from a variety of people in our community. This is an easy and fun way to get new meal ideas and learn about each other. Since you’ve read Alana’s recipe, do you feel inspired to share your Kosher recipe? Don’t forget to get in touch to share your recipe too!
Check out these other recipes from our community:
