No U.S. standard of identity
Mochi ice cream has no standard of identity under U.S. law. The federal rules for frozen desserts sit in 21 CFR part 135, and mochi ice cream has no section of its own there. It is a format: a filling plus a wrapper.
The filling follows the rules for whatever frozen dessert it is. That might be ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet or a non-dairy dessert. If the filling is sold as ice cream, it has to meet 21 CFR 135.110, the section for ice cream and frozen custard. If it is a sorbet or a non-dairy dessert, the ice cream figures below do not apply to it.
Our sources give no foreign national standard for mochi ice cream either.
Fat, solids and eggs in the filling
Because mochi ice cream is a format, its milkfat depends on the filling. When the filling is ice cream, 21 CFR 135.110 sets these limits:
- At least 10% milkfat.
- When bulky flavors such as chocolate, fruit or nuts are added, 8% of the whole is the floor.
- Less than 1.4% egg yolk solids.
A sorbet or non-dairy filling is not held to these dairy figures. Our sources also give no fat or solids figures for the rice dough wrapper itself, so we leave those numbers out.
Air, weight and serving temperature
Overrun is the air whipped into a frozen dessert, given as a percentage of the mix volume. For a mochi ice cream filling, overrun again depends on what the filling is.
For ice cream, the federal rule is about weight. Under 21 CFR 135.110, ice cream must weigh at least 4.5 pounds per gallon. By our arithmetic, that caps overrun near 104% at a typical mix density.
The University of Guelph’s Ice Cream Technology e-Book, by H. Douglas Goff, describes everyday practice. Guelph gives about 100 to 120% overrun for standard ice cream and about 25 to 50% for super-premium. The top of Guelph’s standard range sits above our arithmetic cap, so the two figures do not line up neatly. We show both and do not pick one.
For serving temperature, we found no sourced figure for mochi ice cream. Guelph gives about -16 °C (3 °F) as a typical serving temperature for ice cream. Our sources do not say whether the dough wrapper changes that.
How mochi ice cream is made
Mochi ice cream is a ball of ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of sweet rice dough. Mikawaya describes it as premium ice cream wrapped in sweet rice dough. The company says Frances Hashimoto held its mochi dough recipe, and that combining that dough with ice cream produced its mochi ice cream.
The ice cream inside starts like any ice cream. Guelph describes ice cream being frozen while stirred in a barrel freezer, then hardened in a blast freezer at -30 to -40 °C. Our sources do not give a step-by-step method for making the dough or wrapping the ice cream, so we do not give one here.
Where it came from, and what is disputed
Who made mochi ice cream first is disputed. Here is what each source says.
- Alta Online, in a piece by Robert Ito, reports that in the early 1990s Frances Hashimoto, head of the Los Angeles confectioner Mikawaya, began adapting the traditional recipe by replacing red bean paste with balls of ice cream. She worked it out with her husband, Joel Friedman, who got the idea on a trip to Japan. In the mid-1990s they began selling it at Mikawaya’s flagship shop in Little Tokyo, where it became the top seller.
- Alta reports that the first flavors were chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, green tea and red bean, and that plum wine, black sesame and matcha came later.
- Mikawaya says it has made Japanese pastries and desserts since 1910. Its page gives no date for its mochi ice cream.
- The Associated Press obituary of Hashimoto says she took over Mikawaya in 1970 and that the company popularized mochi ice cream. It notes that some sources credit Hashimoto or her husband, while others say a South Korean company made it a decade earlier. The AP does not name that company.
- Lotte’s 2022 sustainability report lists “1981 Yukimi Daifuku” in its history timeline. The timeline does not describe the product.
The short version: Mikawaya popularized mochi ice cream in the U.S. in the 1990s, Lotte’s Yukimi Daifuku dates to 1981 in Japan, and who made it first is still disputed.