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If pumpkin pie and butter mochi had a baby, it would be this pumpkin butter mochi! A gluten free snack flavored with real pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices, this baked mochi cake is perfect for fall. Recipe updated in 2023.
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Every year I feel like pumpkin spice latte season starts earlier and earlier. I’m a summer forever kind of person, but I do love myself some pumpkin treats, so I meet fall and the onslaught of pumpkin-themed sweets with bittersweet feelings. This pumpkin mochi recipe, however, is anything but. It’s like pumpkin pie crossed with butter mochi: dense, chewy, and very pumpkin-y. Plus, it’s gluten free! If you’re looking for a fall pumpkin dessert that’s not your run-of-the-mill pie or bread, you’ve come to the right place.
What is Butter Mochi?
Butter mochi is a baked mochi cake from Hawai’i. Made from mochiko, which is a glutinous rice flour, butter mochi is typically baked in a 9×13″ dish and cut into squares. It’s dense, chewy, and great for potlucks. No one knows exactly who invented butter mochi, but it likely was borne from the huge wave of Japanese and Filipino immigration to Hawai’i in the 1800s, my own great- great- grandparents being among them!
If you’re new to all things mochi, go take a look at my Ultimate Guide to Mochi to learn more about the names of different mochi desserts.
What Makes This Pumpkin Mochi Different
Recently butter mochi has gotten really popular among the internet. Every big food blog seems to have a butter mochi recipe with a plethora of flavor variations.
My recipe was adapted from an old Japanese church cookbook from the church my family used to attend when I was a kid in California. That means it’s been passed on by an older generation of Japanese aunties and is therefore guaranteed to be delicious.
Recipe Update
Although I loved the original recipe, I did make a few tweaks recently. For one, I decreased the sugar by half a cup. Everyone’s trying to consume less sugar right?
Additionally, the original recipe called for only a can of sweetened condensed milk, melted butter, and four eggs as the liquid ingredients aside from the pumpkin itself. However, mochiko is really absorbent and can handle a lot of added liquid. I decided to update the recipe with the addition of a can of evaporated milk. The extra liquid makes the butter mochi super moist, dense, and more mochi-like. It’s like eating the pumpkin pie filling in mochi form!
My husband, on the other hand, liked the drier, cakier butter mochi recipe better. So if that’s you, you can stick with the original recipe and omit the evaporated milk.
Pumpkin Mochi Ingredient Substitutions and Where to Buy Them
A frequent question I get is where to buy mochiko. I can find it at my local Japanese grocery store, of course, but recently I can even find it at our local Safeway. Of course you can always buy it off Amazon.
As for the pumpkin puree, you can find cans and cans of it lining grocery stores come fall, at least in America. Except for that one year where there was a pumpkin shortage. May that never happen again.
If you live in a place where canned pumpkin puree is hard to get, you could also make it from scratch. You can cook pumpkin or another squash in the microwave until it’s soft, scoop and toss out the insides, then slice it and cut off the outer skin. Mash up the insides, and you got the pumpkin puree! That’s how I cook the kabocha in my creamy kabocha soup.
A note about pumpkin: I find that some brands of canned pumpkin have way more liquid than others. You may want to adjust the amount of liquid in the recipe depending on how wet or dry your pumpkin puree is. Read the recipe update above on ways you can either add or remove liquid from the recipe.
How to Make Pumpkin Butter Mochi
Making this recipe couldn’t be any easier. You mix all the ingredients together and then bake.
THAT’S IT! REALLY!
Some things to watch out for: definitely make sure the mochi is cooked through the middle before you take it out! It will take at least an hour, but everyone’s ovens are different. The more liquid added, the longer it takes to bake.
And be sure to leave enough time for the butter mochi to cool down before you slice it.
More Butter Mochi Recipes
Looking for more butter mochi recipes? Check these out!
- Classic Hawaiian Butter Mochi
- Matcha Butter Mochi
- Black Sesame Butter Mochi
Pumpkin Butter Mochi
If pumpkin pie and butter mochi had a baby, it'd be this pumpkin butter mochi! It's a dense, chewy, cake flavored with real pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices.
4.75 from 36 votes
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Prep Time 10 minutes mins
Cook Time 1 hour hr
Rest Time 2 hours hrs
Course Dessert, Snack
Cuisine Asian American
Servings 10 people
Ingredients
- 1 16 oz. box mochiko
- 1 1/2 cups sugar see note
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 eggs
- 2 15 oz. cans pumpkin puree
- 1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 12 oz. can evaporated milk see note
- 1 cup butter (two sticks) melted
- 2 tsp vanilla
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9×13" baking pan.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk mochiko, sugar, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and salt.
In a separate bowl, beat eggs with pumpkin puree, condensed milk, evaporated milk, melted butter, and vanilla.
Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix well until fully incorporated.
Bake for one hour or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean. Let rest for at least one hour before slicing. Leftovers can be kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Notes
- This is an updated recipe as of 2023 with sugar decreased by 1/2 cup and an addition of a can of evaporated milk. This makes the butter mochi more mochi-like, dense, and very moist. If you’d like the cakier version from the original recipe, simply omit the evaporated milk. Different brands of pumpkin puree may also be drier or wetter, so you may want to adjust the liquid in the recipe accordingly. But this recipe is so forgiving, it can handle a wide range of differences in amount of liquid added.
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Keyword fall, gluten free, mochi, pumpkin
dessertsfallGluten FreeMochimochikopumpkin
