Thursday, February 9, 2012

MochiCream (Torrance, CA)

As you may know, my mom sells her own handmade mochi in Indonesia, so when I found out that MochiCream, a popular Japanese mochi brand, had opened up shop inside the Mitsuwa Market in Torrance, I thought I should try them. You know, for "research".

Mochi Cream
MochiCream does not sell ice cream mochi like Mikawaya. The mochis here are filled with bean paste and whipped cream, but they are all made in Japan and shipped frozen.
Mochi Cream Torrance

When you buy them, you have to thaw the individually plastic-wrapped mochi for about 10-15 minutes until the mochi skin is nice and chewy. The mochis are around $1.80 each and there are a couple dozen flavors or so. We tried six of them this time around.
mochi
Since my mom makes cream-filled mochi too, we know that the cream can make the mochi skin soggy pretty fast. At Mochicream, apparently they've decided to counter this problem by using bean paste in between the cream and the mochi skin. Some flavors have thick, flavored bean paste, while others have only a thin layer of bean paste and more flavored cream. I personally liked the green tea but my friend thought it was too strong. My favorite was the caramel pudding (bottom right picture above), filled with flan/pudding and the caramel sauce in the middle! It's rich, for sure, but the most interesting for me.
Mochi sections
cream surrounded by flavored bean paste
We liked the tart cranberry and the sweet potato as well, but could both forego the chocolate - it tasted more like bean paste than chocolate (above). My mom's chocolate mousse mochi is way better. Still, I'd go back for the caramel pudding mochi and other flavors that are supposed to be bean paste-y (like red bean sweet potato). Next time you're in Torrance, branch out from the ice cream genre and give these mochis a try.

Mochi Cream
21515 Western Ave
Torrance, CA 90501
http://www.mochicream.com/

3 comments:

Anonymous

안녕하세요. 나는 한국에서 왔습니다. 내 U블러그에 오셔서 멋진 동영상을 꼭 보셔서 좋은 일이 있기를 바랍니다. 새해 복 많이 받으세요.

heysandra

Thank you for your insightful investigative reporting on this place! Might have to make a special trip to Torrance...a bit out of the way for me but for Mochi and cream? Well, some things are just worth the drive :)

Joshua Lurie

Looks like an interesting spot, even if they do freeze their mochi. I wouldn't drive there just for MochiCream, but would stop in after another Japanese meal in the South Bay.

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