Easy Recipe To Make Your Own Kawaii Character Warabi Mochi At Home

By Karmen on 14 Feb 2021

Digital Editor

Fancy flexing your cooking skills and making some delicious and kawaii charabi mochi at home?

Keep reading to check out the easy and fast recipe!

A Japanese Instagram food trend that emerged in 2018, charabi mochi comes from the words "character" and "warabi mochi" combined together.

While the most well-known type of mochi is made from glutinous rice, warabi mochi is made of bracken starch instead which gives it a more jelly-like look and texture. It's traditionally covered in kinako soybean flour, but charabi mochi goes without it and is decorated with food colouring and melted chocolate to look like popular characters.

Photo from @decopan.satomi via Instagram

They're surprisingly easy to make and will take about 30 minutes including preparation, plus a few hours for it to chill in the fridge. Instagrammer @decopan.satomi has made them into characters from Hello Kitty, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet to Qoo, Sumikko Gurashi and Snoopy.

Photo from @decopan.satomi via Instagram

Ingredients:

25g bracken starch
1.5 tbsp caster sugar
200ml water
Food colouring, shaved ice syrup or natural colouring (lemon, beet powder etc.)
Chocolate

Steps:

Mix the bracken starch, caster sugar and water together in a pan on low heat.
Once it boils, reduce the heat and use a wooden spatula to beat the mixture until it becomes thick and translucent. It will take about 10 minutes of vigorous beating so it can double as an arm workout!
Once it's cool, shape the mochi into little balls.
Soak the mochi balls in different food colourings and leave them to chill in the refrigerator for four hours.
You can enjoy these rainbow-coloured mochi balls or use a chocolate pen to paint on character faces with melted chocolate. You can also cut seaweed into little eyes, noses and ears.

This recipe serves 1-4 people. You can substitute bracken starch for potato or tapioca starch, although that will alter the texture.

You can also skip using food colouring and simply place them on a coloured glass plate. The transparent mochi will take on the colour of the plate!

Photo from @decopan.satomi via Instagram

You can also serve them on a skewer like @yutianliangzi.

Photo from @yutianliangzi via Instagram

As the mochi itself doesn't have much taste, you can opt to serve it with a dip like brown sugar syrup or matcha powder. It's best enjoyed while chilled and on the same day it's made.