Best Butter Mochi Flavors to Try in 2026

By the Lee Brothers and childhood best friend Jeff Kim at Pixlcat Coffee & Butter Mochi — the first butter mochi café in the United States, baking seven flavors fresh every morning in San Francisco and Boston.

The Best Butter Mochi Flavors, Ranked

If you’ve only had Classic butter mochi, you’ve barely scratched the surface. The flavor variations are where things get interesting — and where Pixlcat has been pushing boundaries with combinations you won’t find at any other butter mochi bakery in the country.

We bake seven flavors fresh every morning in San Francisco and Boston: Classic, Ube White Chocolate, Matcha, Chocolate, Black Sesame, S’more, and Breakfast (a savory bacon-and-cheddar version we’ll save for a separate post).

Here’s how the sweet flavors rank — with the caveat that this is our personal taste, calibrated by three years of selling thousands of squares to thousands of customers across two cities. Your favorite might be different. That’s the point.

1. Ube White Chocolate — The Bestseller

Our most popular flavor, by a wide margin. Ube is a purple yam from the Philippines with a flavor that’s often described as vanilla meets sweet potato meets coconut — but those comparisons all undersell what ube actually tastes like, which is its own thing entirely. We pair it with white chocolate chunks that melt into the batter as it bakes, creating pockets of sweetness throughout the chewy purple square.

Visually, it’s the most striking butter mochi we make — a deep, almost-electric purple with white chocolate flecks that photograph beautifully and look unlike any baked good most people have seen. The flavor is mild, floral, and slightly nutty, with the white chocolate adding richness without making it overly sweet. The pairing is so balanced that even people who don’t typically like ube end up loving this one.

Best with: A vanilla oat latte. The vanilla amplifies the floral notes in the ube, and the oat milk’s nuttiness echoes the natural ube flavor. Read more about ube butter mochi →

2. Matcha — The Connoisseur’s Choice

We use ceremonial-grade matcha from Kyoto Uji — the gold-standard region for high-quality Japanese matcha. The matcha provides a clean, slightly bitter, vegetal flavor that cuts through the buttery richness of the mochi base. The result is a butter mochi that tastes earthier and less sweet than the others, with a sophisticated bitterness that pairs incredibly well with espresso drinks.

The color is a beautiful, deep jade green — not the dusty olive you sometimes see in lower-quality matcha products. We don’t skimp on the matcha. It’s the most expensive ingredient in any of our flavors, and you can taste it. Customers who know matcha tell us this is the closest thing to a quality matcha mochi from Japan they’ve had in the US.

Best with: An iced oat latte. The cold milk and the warm-temperature matcha create a textural and temperature contrast that brings out the matcha’s bitter complexity. Read more about matcha butter mochi →

3. Black Sesame — The Underrated Pick

Black sesame is one of those flavors people don’t know they love until they try it. It’s nutty, slightly toasty, deeply aromatic — like sesame seeds taken to their fullest, most concentrated flavor expression. We use a black sesame paste that gives the mochi a striking dark gray color speckled with darker flecks, plus a depth of flavor that makes other butter mochi flavors feel one-dimensional by comparison.

This is the flavor we recommend to customers who want something “different.” It’s less common than ube or matcha, more grown-up than chocolate, and rewards a slow eating pace — the toasted-nut flavors unfold over the course of the bite rather than hitting you all at once.

Best with: A drip coffee. The roasted notes in good drip coffee mirror the toasted sesame, creating a synergy that’s hard to describe and impossible to forget once you’ve tried it.

4. Chocolate — The Crowd Pleaser

A uniformly baked chocolate butter mochi made with cocoa worked through the batter, giving the whole square a deep cocoa color and a clean chocolate flavor. The chew is the same as Classic; the difference is the cocoa.

This is the flavor we recommend to chocolate-forward palates and to first-timers who want a familiar entry point. It’s comforting, it’s sweet, and it’s the easiest flavor to fall in love with for someone who’s never had butter mochi before.

Best with: A cappuccino. The slightly bitter espresso and creamy foam balance the chocolate’s sweetness in a way that mirrors the classic chocolate-and-coffee pairing.

5. S’more — The Texture Achievement

This is the flavor we’re most proud of from a technical baking standpoint. We crumble graham crackers throughout the chocolate batter and dot the top with marshmallow pieces that toast and caramelize during baking, creating actual marshmallow caramelization on each piece. The result is a butter mochi that genuinely tastes like a campfire s’more — chocolate, graham, marshmallow — all in chewy, mochi form.

It’s the most labor-intensive flavor we make. The marshmallow placement has to be exact, and the graham incorporation has to happen at the right batter consistency or the crackers go soggy. When it works, it’s magic. Children love it. Adults pretend they’re ordering it for their kids and then eat it themselves.

Best with: Hot chocolate or a mocha. Lean into the campfire vibe.

6. Classic — The Foundation

Coming in at #6 doesn’t mean Classic isn’t great — it’s the foundation everything else is built on. Classic is butter, coconut milk, mochiko, sugar, and eggs. Nothing else. Just the pure, traditional Hawaiian butter mochi recipe, baked to a deep golden crust with that signature chewy interior.

We rank it #6 because the variations are simply more interesting once you’ve had Classic a few times. But you should always start with Classic. It’s the baseline that helps you understand what butter mochi is supposed to taste like, so you can appreciate what the other flavors are doing.

Best with: Espresso. The pure butter mochi flavor pairs cleanly with the bitter intensity of espresso — no competing flavors, just the contrast working perfectly.

A Note on Recommendations

If you’re visiting Pixlcat for the first time and want to try multiple flavors, we recommend ordering a 3-pack with Classic, Ube White Chocolate, and Matcha. That covers the foundation, the bestseller, and the connoisseur’s pick. You’ll have a complete picture of what butter mochi can be in three squares.

If you want to go deeper, our 6-pack lets you sample one of each sweet flavor (Classic, Ube White Chocolate, Matcha, Chocolate, Black Sesame, S’more) plus one repeat of your favorite once you’ve tasted through them all.

Where to Find These Flavors

San Francisco — Clement Street (Inner Richmond) 519 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94118 Mon–Fri 7:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Sat–Sun 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM Four Barrel specialty coffee. Near Golden Gate Park.

Boston — Charlestown 32 Cambridge Street, Charlestown, MA 02129 Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 3:00 PM, Sat–Sun 8:00 AM – 3:30 PM George Howell specialty coffee. Steps from Sullivan Station.

San Francisco — Ferry Building Saturday Market Every Saturday at the Ferry Building Farmers Market.

Now shipping nationwide — order online at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. UPS ground from Boston, ships Mon–Wed. BYO 6-piece online boxes start at $39 with six flavors to mix: Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores.

Naturally gluten-free. Baked fresh daily. Catering available for corporate events and private parties.

Follow on Instagram at @pixlcatcoffee and @pxlbuttermochi.