Category: Butter Mochi

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.

Search for butter mochi and you will find two very different things: a boxed butter mochi mix you bake at home, and fresh-baked butter mochi shipped to your door. They both end with the word mochi. They are not the same experience.

A mix is a shortcut. Fresh-baked is the finished thing. Here is what actually separates them, and when each one makes sense.

What a Butter Mochi Mix Actually Is

A butter mochi mix is a bag of dry ingredients: mochiko (glutinous rice flour), sugar, baking powder, and sometimes powdered coconut milk. You add the wet ingredients yourself — usually butter, eggs, and coconut milk or water — then bake it in your own oven for close to an hour. Popular versions include Hawaii’s Best and King’s Hawaiian, both sold as gluten-free 8×8-pan mixes made in Hawaii.

The mix saves you the step of measuring dry ingredients. That is the whole value. Everything that makes butter mochi taste like butter mochi — the real butter, the coconut milk, the eggs, the oven, and the technique — still falls to you.

Where Home Baking Goes Sideways

Butter mochi looks forgiving. It is not. The gap between great butter mochi and gummy, pale, or rubbery butter mochi is narrow, and a mix does not close it.

The most common problems:

• Underbaking — the center never sets into that custardy chew and stays raw and dense.
• Overbaking — the edges turn hard instead of caramelized.
• Pale, undercooked top — home ovens run cool and uneven, and most people pull the pan too early.
• Flat flavor — a mix cannot supply cultured butter, full-fat coconut milk, or the right sugar ratio. It gives you a baseline and hopes you do the rest.

Get any one of those wrong and you have spent an hour to learn that butter mochi is harder than it looks. If you want to understand the texture you are chasing, read why butter mochi is chewy.

The Fresh-Baked Difference

Fresh-baked butter mochi from a kitchen that makes it every day removes every one of those variables.

At Pixlcat, every batch is made by hand with Koda Farms mochiko, real butter, and full-fat coconut milk, then baked until the center sets into a soft, impossibly chewy custard. Our Classic bakes to a golden top with crisp, caramelized edges; the flavored batters like Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, and Black Sesame keep their own color. Either way: crisp edges, a dense and stretchy center, buttery all the way through. That contrast is the entire point of butter mochi, and it is the exact thing a home mix struggles to deliver.

We have been baking it daily across two cafés long enough to make the technique disappear. You just get the result.

Butter Mochi Mix vs Fresh-Baked, Side by Side

	Butter Mochi Mix	Fresh-Baked (Pixlcat)
What you get	Dry ingredients in a bag	Finished butter mochi, ready to eat
Your effort	Add wet ingredients, bake ~1 hour	None
Butter & coconut	You supply, quality varies	Real butter, full-fat coconut milk
Crisp edges	Depends on your oven	Crisp, caramelized edges every batch
Texture risk	High (under/overbaking common)	Consistent, dialed in daily
Flavors	Usually one (plain)	Seven, including Ube White Chocolate, Matcha, Black Sesame
Gluten	Naturally gluten-free	Naturally gluten-free
Best for	A weekend baking project	Tasting butter mochi the way it is meant to be

Both are naturally gluten-free, because butter mochi is built on mochiko rice flour, not wheat. The mix does not have an edge there — fresh-baked butter mochi is gluten-free for the same reason.

When a Butter Mochi Mix Makes Sense

A mix is a fine choice if the baking is the point. If you want a rainy-afternoon kitchen project, you enjoy the process, and you are not chasing a specific result, a mix gets you most of the way with less measuring.

But if you want to actually taste great butter mochi — dense, chewy, crisp-edged, buttery, the kind that turns first-timers into regulars — a mix is the long way around. You are buying an hour of work and a gamble on your own oven.

Skip the Guesswork — Order Fresh Butter Mochi Online

Pixlcat ships butter mochi nationwide from our Boston kitchen via UPS ground, Monday through Wednesday. Order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. Build-Your-Own 6-piece boxes start at $39 — pick any combination of Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores. Assorted 6/12/18-piece boxes also available ($39 / $78 / $117). Order by Wednesday, enjoy by the weekend.

New to butter mochi? See the best flavors to try, or every way to buy butter mochi.

Pixlcat is the world’s first butter mochi café. We bake every batch by hand at our cafés in San Francisco and Boston, and ship nationwide from Boston. Order online →  |  Learn more about butter mochi →

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Butter Mochi Mix vs Fresh-Baked FAQ

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.

Mochi has gone from a niche Japanese confection to one of the most searched-for desserts in the US. But “mochi” covers a huge range of desserts — and most people don’t realize how different they are from each other. Here’s a guide to the best mochi in America and where to find it.

Butter Mochi — The Baked Hawaiian Kind

Butter mochi is a baked dessert made with mochiko rice flour, butter, coconut milk, and eggs. Unlike Japanese mochi (which is pounded or steamed), butter mochi is baked in a pan, giving it a golden crust and a chewy, dense interior. Butter mochi is naturally gluten-free — it’s a Hawaiian staple that’s been at potlucks for generations — one of many traditional Hawaiian desserts shaped by Japanese, Filipino, and Portuguese influences.

Where to find it: Pixlcat Coffee in San Francisco (519 Clement St) and Boston (32 Cambridge St, Charlestown) is the only café in the country built around butter mochi. Seven flavors baked fresh daily. Gift boxes available in-store. Now shipping nationwide via UPS ground from Boston (Mon–Wed) — order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. BYO 6-piece boxes start at $39.

Mochi Ice Cream — The Frozen Kind

A ball of ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of pounded mochi dough. The combination of the cold, creamy ice cream and the chewy mochi wrapper is what made mochi mainstream in the US. My/Mochi and Bubbies are the most widely available brands, found in most grocery store freezer sections. Japanese convenience stores like 7-Eleven carry their own versions.

Where to find it: Most major grocery stores. Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Target all carry mochi ice cream.

Mochi Donuts — The Chewy Donut Kind

A ring-shaped donut made with mochiko rice flour (or tapioca starch) instead of wheat, giving it a distinctly chewy texture. Popularized by chains like Mochi Dough and Mochinut, mochi donuts are typically glazed in bright colors and flavors. They’re not traditional Japanese — they’re a modern Asian-American creation.

Where to find it: Mochi donut shops have spread rapidly across the US. Mochinut has locations nationwide.

Traditional Japanese Mochi — The Pounded Kind

The original. Traditional mochi is made by pounding steamed glutinous rice until smooth and elastic. It’s served plain, filled with red bean paste (daifuku), or dusted in kinako powder. In Japan, fresh mochi is associated with New Year celebrations. In the US, you’ll find it at Japanese confectioneries and some Asian grocery stores.

Where to find it: Minamoto Kitchoan (NYC), Fugetsu-Do (LA), and Japanese grocery stores like Mitsuwa and Nijiya.

Chi Chi Dango — The Hawaiian Soft Kind

Soft, chewy mochi squares made from mochiko, sugar, and coconut milk — simpler than butter mochi, without the butter and eggs. Cut into rectangles, dusted with starch, and shared at every Hawaiian gathering. Nisshodo in Honolulu is the most famous source.

Where to find it: Mostly in Hawaii. A few mainland bakeries like Keola’s Mochi & Eats (Seattle) offer chi chi dango.

Which Type of Mochi Should You Try?

If you’ve only had mochi ice cream, you’ve barely scratched the surface. Butter mochi is the most surprising to first-timers because it’s baked rather than frozen or pounded — the texture is completely different from anything else called “mochi.” Start with a Classic from Pixlcat and go from there.

How to buy butter mochi →

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

They share a name, and they both start with glutinous rice. But butter mochi and Japanese mochi are about as different as a brownie and a baguette — both baked, both delicious, completely different experiences in your mouth.

If you’ve had one, you haven’t had the other. Here’s what separates them.

How They’re Made

Japanese mochi starts with whole sticky rice. The rice gets steamed, then pounded — traditionally in a large wooden mortar with heavy mallets during mochitsuki, a ceremony that predates modern Japan. The pounding transforms the rice into a smooth, elastic dough that can be shaped by hand into balls, filled with sweet bean paste, wrapped around ice cream, or stretched into sheets.

Butter mochi doesn’t involve pounding anything. It’s baked. Mochiko (glutinous rice flour) gets whisked together with melted butter, coconut milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, then poured into a pan and baked until the top turns golden and slightly crispy. It comes out of the oven as a single slab — dense, rich, and glistening with butter.

One is shaped by hand. The other is sliced from a pan.

The Texture Difference

This is where people get surprised.

Japanese mochi is stretchy and elastic. Pull it apart and it resists, then snaps. It’s smooth on the outside, often dusted with starch to prevent sticking. The chew is taffy-like — it pulls, it bounces, it stretches. Think of the mochi wrapped around ice cream at the grocery store: that smooth, rubbery shell is classic Japanese mochi texture.

Butter mochi is dense and custardy. The edges caramelize to a thin golden crust. The interior is chewy but yielding — it doesn’t stretch so much as it gives. Imagine a cross between a flan, a blondie, and a cheesecake, but with a chew you’ve never felt in any of those. Butter mochi is rich, buttery, and melts slowly. It doesn’t bounce — it lingers.

At Pixlcat, our butter mochi has that unmistakable contrast: crispy golden top, soft and impossibly chewy center. Every batch is made with Koda Farms mochiko and baked by hand at our cafés in San Francisco and Boston.

The Ingredients

	Japanese Mochi	Butter Mochi
Base	Whole glutinous rice (steamed, pounded)	Mochiko rice flour (pre-ground)
Fat	None	Butter + coconut milk
Eggs	None	Yes — contributes to custardy texture
Sugar	Sometimes, varies by style	Yes — essential to the batter
Dairy	None (most varieties)	Butter, sometimes milk
Gluten	Naturally gluten-free	Naturally gluten-free
Method	Steamed and pounded	Mixed and baked

Both are naturally gluten-free. “Glutinous” in glutinous rice refers to the sticky, glue-like texture of the starch — not gluten protein. Neither contains wheat, barley, or rye.

For how butter mochi compares to mochi donuts and mochi ice cream, see our guide: Butter Mochi vs Mochi Donuts.

Flavor Profiles

Traditional Japanese mochi is intentionally mild. The rice dough is a vehicle — a soft, stretchy wrapper that carries fillings like anko (sweet red bean paste), fresh strawberry (ichigo daifuku), or ice cream. The dough itself tastes subtly of rice, clean and neutral.

Butter mochi leads with flavor. The butter caramelizes during baking. The coconut milk adds richness. The eggs give it body. And then there are the flavors — at Pixlcat, our seven signatures range from Classic (butter, coconut, vanilla — the Hawaiian potluck original) to Ube White Chocolate (natural purple yam, white chocolate) to Black Sesame (toasted, nutty, savory-sweet) to Matcha (ceremonial Kyoto Uji, earthy and slightly bitter).

Butter mochi isn’t a wrapper waiting for a filling. It’s the whole experience.

Where They Come From

Japanese mochi has centuries of history. Mochitsuki ceremonies date back over a thousand years. Mochi holds deep cultural significance in Japan — it’s eaten during New Year’s celebrations (kagami mochi), offered at temples, and served at weddings. The tradition traveled across the Pacific with Japanese immigrants to Hawaii.

Butter mochi is Hawaiian. It emerged from Hawaii’s multicultural plantation era, where Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, and Native Hawaiian food traditions collided and fused. The exact origin is debated — some trace it to Filipino bibingka, others to Portuguese bebinca — but the version we know today, made with mochiko and butter and baked in a pan, became a staple at Hawaiian potlucks, church fundraisers, and family gatherings.

At Pixlcat, the Lee brothers — Dennis, David, Daniel, and their childhood best friend Jeff Kim, Korean-American restauranteurs who previously ran the acclaimed Namu Gaji in San Francisco — bring their own cultural lens to butter mochi. The result is a modern interpretation of a Hawaiian dessert, built on a Japanese rice flour, served alongside specialty coffee. That’s the kind of thing that only happens when traditions cross paths.

Can You Ship Them?

Japanese mochi is delicate. Traditional fresh mochi hardens within hours and needs to be eaten quickly. Commercial mochi products (ice cream mochi, shelf-stable varieties) use modified recipes and packaging to extend shelf life, but fresh-pounded mochi doesn’t travel well.

Butter mochi ships beautifully. The baked structure, high butter and egg content, and mochiko starch matrix all help it retain moisture and texture far longer than wheat-based baked goods. At room temperature, it holds for 3–5 days. Refrigerated, 2 weeks. Frozen, up to 3 months.

Pixlcat ships butter mochi nationwide from our Boston kitchen via UPS ground, Monday through Wednesday. Order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. Build-Your-Own 6-piece boxes start at $39 — pick any combination of Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores. Assorted 6/12/18-piece boxes also available ($39 / $78 / $117). Order by Wednesday, enjoy by the weekend.

Which One Should You Try?

If you love Japanese mochi, you’ll be fascinated by butter mochi — but don’t expect the same experience. Butter mochi is richer, denser, and more complex. It pairs with coffee the way Japanese mochi never could: the buttery sweetness against a pour-over or espresso is something you have to taste to understand.

If you’ve never had either, butter mochi is the more accessible entry point. It’s familiar enough — it looks like a bar, it’s sweet, it’s handheld — but the texture is completely unlike anything you’ve tried. Dense, chewy, buttery, with that golden caramelized crust.

Either way, now you know: they’re not the same thing.

Pixlcat is the world’s first butter mochi café. We bake every batch by hand at our cafés in San Francisco and Boston, and ship nationwide from Boston. Order online →  |  Learn more about butter mochi →

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Butter Mochi vs Japanese Mochi FAQ

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.

If your feed has been full of golden, chewy, crispy-edged desserts lately, you’re not imagining it. Butter mochi is having a moment — and it’s coming from two directions at once.

The Shanghai Butter Mochi Wave

In Asia, a variation called “Shanghai butter mochi” or “butter tteok” has been going viral on TikTok and Instagram. It’s a crispier, lighter version of traditional butter mochi — sometimes with tapioca starch added for extra stretch — that produces dramatic golden edges and an almost canelé-like crust. Food bloggers across Korea, China, and Southeast Asia have been sharing their takes, and the trend has crossed over to Western food media.

The irony: butter mochi has been a Hawaiian potluck staple for generations. It didn’t need to be “discovered” — it was always there, passed down through community cookbooks and church fundraisers across the islands. What’s changed is who’s paying attention.

Why It’s Catching On Now

Three things are converging to push butter mochi into the mainstream:

The texture. In a food culture obsessed with texture — think mochi donuts, croffles, ube everything — butter mochi delivers something no other dessert does. It’s chewy like mochi, crusty like a brownie, and bouncy like a custard. There’s no Western equivalent. People try it and immediately want to describe it to someone else, which is exactly how food goes viral.

The gluten-free angle. Butter mochi is made with mochiko rice flour and is naturally gluten-free — no substitution, no compromise. As more people eat GF by choice or necessity, butter mochi fills a gap that GF brownies and cookies can’t: it’s a dessert that was always gluten-free, so the texture is the point, not a workaround.

The visual. Ube butter mochi is naturally purple. Matcha butter mochi is deep green. Classic has a golden, caramelized crust. These are Instagram-ready desserts without any food styling — the colors are real, coming from ube yam, ceremonial-grade matcha, and the Maillard reaction on butter and sugar.

From Trend to Category

What separates butter mochi from typical food trends — remember cloud bread? dalgona coffee? — is that it has real roots. It’s not an internet invention. It’s a Hawaiian dessert with decades of history, backed by a community of home bakers who’ve been making it long before TikTok existed. That depth gives it staying power.

At Pixlcat Coffee, we’ve been baking butter mochi since day one — not because it was trending, but because the Lee brothers grew up around it. We’re the world’s first butter mochi café, with seven flavors baked fresh daily in San Francisco and Boston. We didn’t ride the wave. We’ve been here.

Order Butter Mochi Nationwide

And now you don’t have to fly to SF or Boston to try it. Pixlcat ships butter mochi nationwide from Boston via UPS ground, Monday through Wednesday. Order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. Build-Your-Own 6-piece boxes start at $39, with all six shipping flavors to mix and match: Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores. Naturally gluten-free, baked fresh, packed in our pink box. Order by Wednesday, enjoy by the weekend.

Read the full guide →

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 problem with most food gifts is predictability. Chocolate? Nice, but forgettable. Cookie tin? Already have three. The best food gifts are the ones that introduce someone to something they didn’t know existed — something they’ll remember and tell other people about.

Here are food gifts that actually surprise people. Shopping for someone gluten-free? Also see our dedicated guide to best gluten-free dessert gifts in 2026.

Butter Mochi

Ask ten people if they’ve had butter mochi and nine will say “what is that?” That’s what makes it the perfect food gift. It’s a chewy, golden-crusted Hawaiian dessert made with rice flour — naturally gluten-free, visually stunning (especially the purple ube and deep green matcha flavors), and unlike anything else in a bakery case.

Pixlcat Coffee bakes seven flavors fresh daily in SF and Boston. Gift boxes start at $15 in-store. Now shipping nationwide via UPS ground from Boston (Mon–Wed) at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. BYO 6-piece online boxes start at $39 — ship a curated mix of Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores.

Single-Origin Hot Chocolate

Not Swiss Miss. We’re talking craft hot chocolate from bean-to-bar makers like Dandelion, Raaka, or Ritual — where the cacao origin actually changes the flavor profile. Gift a set of three origins and let the recipient taste the difference between Guatemalan and Tanzanian cacao.

Artisan Jerky or Biltong

Companies like Righteous Felon and Brooklyn Biltong have elevated dried meat into a genuinely giftable format. Flavors like habanero tequila or truffle are a far cry from gas-station jerky. High protein, shelf-stable, and surprising.

Infused Honey Flight

A set of three or four honeys — lavender, truffle, hot honey, and wildflower — is a beautiful, practical gift. Savannah Bee Company and Mike’s Hot Honey both offer gift sets. Honey pairs with everything from cheese to toast to butter mochi (we’ve tested this).

Japanese Kit Kats

Japan releases dozens of limited-edition Kit Kat flavors that don’t exist elsewhere — matcha, sake, strawberry cheesecake, sweet potato. A curated box of Japanese Kit Kats is one of the most reliably fun gifts you can give. Available on Amazon Japan or specialty importers.

Craft Hot Sauce Set

Beyond Sriracha. Small-batch hot sauces from makers like Secret Aardvark, Yellowbird, or Heartbeat offer genuine flavor variety — from smoky chipotle to fruity habanero to garlic-forward. A three-pack gift set is affordable, surprising, and useful.

The Best Food Gifts Are the Ones Nobody Expects

The common thread: each of these gifts introduces the recipient to something outside their usual rotation. That’s what separates a memorable food gift from one that gets stacked on the counter and forgotten. Butter mochi wins this category because it’s genuinely new to most people — not a variation on something they’ve already had, but an entirely different dessert they didn’t know existed.

Here’s every way to buy butter mochi →

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.

Hawaiian desserts are some of the most distinctive sweets in the world — shaped by Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Chinese, and Polynesian influences, all filtered through the islands’ unique culture. If you’ve never been to Hawaii, you might not recognize most of them. Here’s what you need to know.

Butter Mochi

Butter mochi is a baked dessert made with mochiko rice flour, butter, coconut milk, sugar, and eggs. It’s naturally gluten-free, dense, chewy, and golden-crusted — a cross between Japanese mochi and Western baking. Unlike traditional mochi (which is steamed or pounded), butter mochi is baked in a pan, giving it crispy edges and a soft, bouncy center. It’s a staple at Hawaiian potlucks and has been passed down through community cookbooks for generations.

On the mainland, Pixlcat Coffee is the world’s first butter mochi café, baking seven flavors fresh daily in San Francisco and Boston. Now shipping nationwide via UPS ground from Boston (Mon–Wed) — order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. BYO 6-piece boxes start at $39 with six flavors to mix: Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, and S’mores.

Haupia

Haupia is a coconut pudding traditionally made with coconut milk and arrowroot or cornstarch. It has a firm, sliceable consistency — more like a set custard than a Western pudding. You’ll find haupia at virtually every luau, usually cut into squares and served as a side dessert. The modern evolution is haupia pie — layers of chocolate and coconut haupia in a crust, popularized by Ted’s Bakery on the North Shore.

Malasadas

Portuguese doughnuts brought to Hawaii by immigrants who came to work the sugar plantations. Malasadas are deep-fried dough balls, rolled in sugar, and served hot. Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu is the most famous source, but malasadas have spread across the islands and increasingly to the mainland. Unlike mainland doughnuts, malasadas have no hole and are slightly denser, with a sugar coating instead of glaze.

Shave Ice

Not a “snow cone.” Hawaiian shave ice uses a finely shaved block of ice (not crushed) that creates a texture closer to fresh snow. Topped with fruit-flavored syrups, often with condensed milk, mochi balls, or azuki beans at the bottom. Matsumoto Shave Ice on the North Shore is iconic, but every town in Hawaii has a favorite spot.

Chi Chi Dango

Soft, chewy mochi squares made from mochiko rice flour, sugar, and coconut milk — simpler than butter mochi, without the butter and eggs. Usually cut into rectangles and dusted with katakuriko (potato starch) to prevent sticking. Chi chi dango is the mochi you’ll find at every Hawaiian gathering, often in pastel colors.

Mochi

Hawaii’s mochi culture is distinct from Japan’s. Hawaiian mochi is softer, more casual, and made for sharing — sold by the pound rather than individually. Local mochi shops like Nisshodo in Honolulu have been making it for over 100 years. Flavors range from classic plain and kinako to peanut butter and coconut.

Where to Find Hawaiian Desserts on the Mainland

Hawaiian desserts are still hard to find outside the islands. Butter mochi is available at Pixlcat Coffee in San Francisco and Boston, with a few other small bakeries in Seattle and Los Angeles. Pixlcat also ships nationwide from Boston via UPS — order at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. Malasadas have started appearing at pop-ups and food trucks in major cities. For most other Hawaiian desserts, you’ll either need to visit the islands, order from a mainland bakery that ships, or make them at home.

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.

Who Makes the Best Butter Mochi?

Butter mochi has gone from a Hawaiian potluck staple to a cult favorite at coffee shops, farmers markets, and bakeries across the US. The result? People are searching for “the best butter mochi” and finding wildly different answers depending on where they live.

We get this question constantly from customers visiting Pixlcat for the first time, often comparing notes from a trip to Hawaii or a recommendation they got from a friend. So we’re going to do something honest: we’re going to compare ourselves to other notable butter mochi makers in the country, give you our take, and let you decide who’s actually best.

Spoiler: there’s no single answer. The “best” butter mochi depends on what you want from it.

The Pixlcat Position

Let’s be upfront: we’re biased. We run Pixlcat. We bake butter mochi every single morning in San Francisco and Boston. We’re the world’s first butter mochi-focused café, and the only one we know of that’s built an entire menu and brand around butter mochi paired with specialty coffee.

Here’s what we think makes our butter mochi distinctive: the variety, the freshness, and the coffee pairing.

We bake seven flavors fresh every day: Classic, Ube White Chocolate, Matcha, Chocolate, Black Sesame, S’more, and Breakfast (savory, with bacon and cheddar). Most butter mochi makers offer one or two flavors. We’ve invested heavily in flavor development because we believe butter mochi has more range than people give it credit for. Our Ube White Chocolate is the most popular flavor, and our Matcha uses ceremonial-grade Uji matcha from Kyoto. Our Black Sesame is criminally underrated.

We bake fresh every morning. The texture matters. Day-old butter mochi loses some of that signature contrast between crispy edges and soft center.

And we’re a coffee shop first. We pair every flavor with specialty coffee — Four Barrel in San Francisco, George Howell in Boston — because that combination is what makes butter mochi an experience rather than just a snack.

If you want range, freshness, and the full butter-mochi-and-coffee pairing experience, we think we’re the best. We also might be biased.

Honorable Mentions

Here are other butter mochi makers worth knowing about. We’ve eaten and respect all of these.

Liliha Bakery (Honolulu, HI)

A 75-year Hawaiian institution. Liliha makes a Classic butter mochi that represents the traditional Hawaiian style at its best — dense, chewy, slightly less sweet than the mainland versions, with that authentic potluck-recipe feel. If you want the original Hawaiian butter mochi experience and you’re in Honolulu, this is the place. Their coco puffs are also legendary.

Best for: Pure traditional Hawaiian butter mochi, eaten in Hawaii. Hard to beat for authenticity. Limited variety — they focus on doing the classic right.

Third Culture Bakery (Berkeley, CA)

The trademarked “Mochi Muffin” pioneer. Third Culture took butter mochi batter, baked it in a muffin tin, and trademarked the name — sparking some controversy in the Hawaiian and Japanese American communities, but their muffins are genuinely well-made. They’ve expanded to multiple Bay Area locations and added other Asian-American baked goods.

Best for: The mochi muffin format specifically. Their format prioritizes more crispy edges per portion than traditional butter mochi squares. They have flavor variety in their muffin format and are easy to find across the Bay Area.

Mister Mochi (Honolulu, HI)

A newer Hawaii bakery focused entirely on butter mochi with creative flavor combinations — things like Lilikoi (passion fruit), POG (passion-orange-guava), and Coconut Haupia. Their flavor experimentation is impressive and they’ve built a following on Instagram.

Best for: Tropical Hawaiian flavor experimentation. If you want butter mochi in flavors you can only get in Hawaii, this is a great choice during a visit.

Onolicious Hawaii (Various locations)

More of a recipe blog than a bakery, but Kathy YL Chan’s Onolicious Hawaii has been an authoritative voice on Hawaiian food for years — including butter mochi. Her recipe is widely considered the best home-baking version. If you want to make butter mochi yourself rather than buy it, start there.

Best for: Making butter mochi at home. Reliable, well-tested, traditional.

Random Hawaiian Family Recipes

Honest answer: some of the best butter mochi we’ve ever eaten was at Hawaiian family potlucks, made from a recipe scrawled on a notecard, baked in a slightly-too-warm oven, and shared from a foil pan. The butter mochi served with love at a luau or a backyard birthday party in Hilo or Kailua-Kona is, on its day, unbeatable.

Best for: When you can find one. Hard to replicate the magic of family-made butter mochi at scale, which is part of why it’s so special.

So Who Actually Makes the Best Butter Mochi?

Honest answer: it depends on what you want.

If you want traditional Hawaiian butter mochi in Hawaii, go to Liliha Bakery. If you want creative flavors in Hawaii, try Mister Mochi. If you want the mochi muffin format in the Bay Area, Third Culture is solid. If you want to bake it yourself, Kathy YL Chan’s recipe is the gold standard.

If you want seven flavors baked fresh daily, paired with world-class specialty coffee, in the only butter mochi-focused café on the mainland, with freshness and variety designed around the butter mochi experience itself — we think Pixlcat is your best option in San Francisco and Boston.

Where to Find Pixlcat

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 across six flavors (Classic, Chocolate, Matcha, Ube White Chocolate, Black Sesame, S’mores).

Naturally gluten-free. Baked fresh daily.

Follow on Instagram at @pixlcatcoffee and @pxlbuttermochi.

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.

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.

Most bakeries that offer matcha anything use culinary-grade matcha powder. It’s cheaper, it’s fine for baking, and most customers won’t notice the difference. We do it differently. Pixlcat’s matcha butter mochi is made with ceremonial-grade matcha from Uji, Kyoto — the same quality you’d whisk into a bowl for a traditional tea ceremony.

You can taste the difference. And you can definitely see it.

What Makes Ceremonial-Grade Matcha Different

All matcha is made from shade-grown green tea leaves, stone-ground into a fine powder. But the similarities between culinary and ceremonial grade end there.

Culinary-grade matcha is made from older tea leaves harvested later in the season. It’s more bitter, less complex, and has a duller green color. It works fine when you’re mixing it with sugar, milk, and other strong flavors — which is why most cafés use it.

Ceremonial-grade matcha comes from the first harvest of the youngest leaves, which have been shaded for weeks to boost chlorophyll and L-theanine. The result is a matcha that’s vibrant green, smooth rather than bitter, and has a layered flavor profile — vegetal, slightly sweet, with an umami finish. It’s the matcha that’s meant to be the star, not a background flavor.

At Pixlcat, our matcha is sourced from Uji, Kyoto — the region that has defined Japanese matcha production for over 800 years. We use the same quality in our matcha butter mochi that we use in our matcha lattes.

Matcha Butter Mochi: What to Expect

Pixlcat’s matcha butter mochi is the deepest green you’ll see in any bakery case. That color comes from the quality of the matcha — ceremonial-grade powder keeps its intensity through the baking process in a way that culinary-grade simply doesn’t.

The flavor is earthy, slightly bitter, and more concentrated than a matcha latte. When matcha is baked into the butter mochi batter — alongside coconut milk, butter, and mochiko rice flour — the heat transforms it. The bitterness softens, the vegetal notes deepen, and it develops a toasted quality that you don’t get from a cold drink. It’s still unmistakably matcha, but it’s matcha in a form you haven’t tried before.

This is the flavor for people who already love matcha and want more of it. If you’re new to matcha, try a matcha latte first and work your way to the mochi. If you already know you love matcha, this is what you’re looking for.

How to Pair Matcha Butter Mochi with Coffee

This is the one Pixlcat flavor where the pairing choice matters most. Matcha butter mochi with espresso creates a fascinating contrast — the coffee’s roasted bitterness against the matcha’s grassy bitterness, with butter mochi’s sweetness bridging them. It’s our most complex pairing.

If you want something smoother, try matcha butter mochi with a dopo panna latte in honeycomb or vanilla. The sweetness of the whipped cream softens the matcha and lets the earthy flavor come through gently.

Or go full matcha — order a matcha butter mochi with a Pixlcat matcha latte. We make ours with the same ceremonial-grade Uji matcha, organic milk, and no added sugar. It’s matcha on matcha, and it works.

Where to Get Matcha Butter Mochi

We bake matcha butter mochi fresh daily:

• San Francisco: 519 Clement St, Inner Richmond — open daily at 7am
• Boston: 32 Cambridge St, Charlestown — open daily at 8am
• SF Ferry Building: Saturdays, 8am–2pm

$5.50 per piece. Naturally gluten-free, like all Pixlcat butter mochi.

Now shipping nationwide — order Matcha butter mochi at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. UPS ground from Boston, ships Mon–Wed. BYO 6-piece online boxes start at $39 across six flavors including Matcha.

Want to give it as a gift? Check out our butter mochi gift box guide. Ready to order? Here’s every way to buy butter mochi.

See all seven flavors → Pixlcat Butter Mochi Flavors

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.

If you’ve been anywhere near a dessert menu, a bakery case, or an Instagram explore page in the last few years, you’ve seen ube. The vibrant purple yam from the Philippines has gone from a home-cooking staple in Filipino kitchens to one of the most recognizable dessert flavors in the country. And at Pixlcat Coffee, it’s our bestselling butter mochi flavor.

The Rise of Ube

Ube — pronounced OO-beh — is a purple yam native to the Philippines, where it’s been used in desserts like halo-halo, ube halaya, and pandesal for generations. It has a naturally purple color that ranges from lavender to deep violet, and a flavor that’s subtly sweet, nutty, and almost vanilla-like. No artificial dyes needed — that color is all yam.

What changed is who’s paying attention. Filipino bakeries in Los Angeles and the Bay Area — places like Café 86 and Manila Creamery — introduced ube to broader American audiences through ube crinkle cookies, ube cheesecake, and ube soft serve. From there, it moved into mainstream bakeries, ice cream shops, and chain menus. By 2023, ube wasn’t a trend anymore. It was a permanent fixture.

But here’s the thing about ube: its flavor profile is gentle. It’s not aggressive like matcha or polarizing like black sesame. Ube is approachable. It’s sweet without being cloying, earthy without being bitter, and that purple — it stops people in their tracks. That’s why it works so well in butter mochi.

What Is Ube Butter Mochi?

Ube butter mochi takes the traditional Hawaiian butter mochi base — mochiko rice flour, butter, coconut milk, sugar, and eggs — and folds in real ube for color and flavor. The result is a naturally purple, chewy, dense dessert that’s unlike anything else in a bakery case.

At Pixlcat, our version is Ube White Chocolate. We pair ube with white chocolate chips, and the combination is the reason this flavor outsells everything else we make. The white chocolate adds a layer of richness and sweetness that plays against the ube’s subtle earthiness. The chips melt during baking, creating pockets of sweetness throughout the chewy mochi texture.

It’s the flavor we recommend if you’ve never tried butter mochi before but want something more adventurous than Classic. And it’s the one that converts the most first-timers into regulars.

How Dennis Developed the Flavor

Dennis Lee — Pixlcat’s co-founder and the person behind every recipe — tested dozens of ube concentrations before landing on the final version. Too much ube and the mochi becomes heavy, losing the lightness that makes butter mochi work. Too little and it’s just purple-tinted Classic.

The white chocolate pairing came from Dennis’s years running Namu Gaji, where he learned that the best flavor combinations aren’t about adding more — they’re about finding the one ingredient that makes everything else sharper. White chocolate does that for ube. It amplifies the sweetness without competing with the yam’s earthy, nutty character.

Every Pixlcat butter mochi flavor gets tested against our coffee program. Ube White Chocolate pairs particularly well with our signature Ube Matcha Latte or one of our signature dopo panna lattes — the espresso’s cocoa tones and slight bitterness balances the ube’s sweetness perfectly.

Try Ube Butter Mochi at Pixlcat

We bake Ube White Chocolate butter mochi fresh daily at both Pixlcat locations:

• San Francisco: 519 Clement St, Inner Richmond — open daily at 7am
• Boston: 32 Cambridge St, Charlestown — open daily at 8am
• SF Ferry Building Farmers Market: Saturdays, 8am–2pm

$5.50 per piece. Like all Pixlcat butter mochi, Ube White Chocolate is naturally gluten-free — made with mochiko rice flour.

Now shipping nationwide — order Ube White Chocolate butter mochi at pixlcatbuttermochi.com. UPS ground from Boston, ships Mon–Wed. BYO 6-piece online boxes start at $39 across six flavors including Ube White Chocolate. Follow @pxlbuttermochi on Instagram for the latest.

Want to give it as a gift? Check out our butter mochi gift box guide. Ready to order? Here’s every way to buy butter mochi.

See all seven flavors → Pixlcat Butter Mochi Flavors