This recipe was directly inspired by the mango mochi at ECK Bakery in Houston(special thank you to my friend Amanda for taking me there, because the mochi was incredibly delicious!). So on my recent trip to Texas, I stopped by in both Austin and with my friend Amanda and her husband Jimin, we all went to Houston together as well! Also randomly, I bumped into Suu(from Masterchef season 11) and her husband Charles there as well(which was hilarious because we were planning to get lunch together that day across town from where the bakery was). At this family-owned Chinese bakery, ECK, they had a lot of Chinese bakery staples – egg tarts, steamed sponge cakes, and these super soft, melt-in-the-mouth mango mochi, that were stuffed with fresh mango and rolled in coconut flakes. They were very delicious to say the least, and if it was not for the fact we had lunch in an hour, I probably could have devoured an entire box of them on my own. Which is why I decided to unleash the Pandora’s Box that is creating the food I crave, and try my hand at recreating the ECK mango mochi recipe.

This recipe had to go through a couple stages of R&D. For my first batch, I scaled down the mango juice by half, which resulted in mochi that was noticeably firmer. I was basing the recipe solely off of my rainbow dango, which already had a similarly soft texture to ECK’s. I figured that I could just sub out the water with mango juice, one for one, and scaled back on the sugar, and it would be that easy. Evidently not, as that was what caused the mochi to feel so firm. However, when I doubled down on the mango juice and doubled up the sugar, I found a much more desirable mouthfeel, with the rice flours I used being better-hydrated from the additional mango juice, resulting in a sticky but soft end-product, which was more or less the same as ECK’s!

For this recipe, I did stick with using a combination of shiratamako and joshinko rice flours. The shiratamako adds a softness, while joshinko adds structure, resulting in a more tender mochi compared to just using glutinous rice flour. You can totally make this recipe subbing out both with mochiko as well, but the mochi will just not be nearly as soft as if it were to be made with the other two rice flours. All in all, this recipe is pretty straightforward because you are steaming almost everything, then wrapping the dough around a mango, and rolling it in coconut flakes to finish. If anything were to get sticky, I recommend keeping a bowl of lukewarm water nearby, as that is the easiest way to work with mochi without it sticking to your hands(without adding potato starch into the dough, which will stiffen it too much).

Makes about 8 to 12 dango:
80g or 3/4 cups shiratamako
70g or 1/3 cup joshinko
110g or 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/3 cups mango juice
1 fresh mango, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
coconut flakes

Mix the first four ingredients together into a batter. Divide the batter between two bowls that were lined with cooking spray, and steam 20 minutes. Take the bowls and place onto a wetted cutting board. Divide the mochi into 16 pieces. Wrap each piece around the fresh mango, and roll in the coconut flakes.