Taiwanese Fresh Peanut Mochi

When I was a kid, the adults used to say that I had “sticky rice stomach,” meaning that I eat a lot of glutinous rice. It’s my favorite thing in anything — zongzi, youfan, nian gao, rice-stuffed chicken soup, fan tuan, tang yuan, purple rice congee. From savory dishes to sweet snacks, the list of sticky rice deliciousness I was lucky to grow up with in Taiwan is endless. 

A big chunk of my childhood was spent with my nanny. She was a loving lady, a grandmother who asks you every couple of hours if she could feed you something tasty, just in case you got hungry since the last time she asked. I loved staying at her place because she fed me lots of sticky rice yumminess, including fresh mochi, which is one of the Taiwanese snacks I miss the most. 

I would get so stoked when I saw her bringing back two plastic bags from the streets: one loaded with a mass of freshly made mochi, another one filled with a sweet mixture of peanut meal and sugar. I could smell the freshly steamed sweet rice as soon as she got to the door and she would look at me as if she’d found a treasure for me (she did).

I would tear the big chunk of mochi into bite-size pieces with my little hands, throw it into the bag of sweet peanut meal, roll it around until it was fully covered, then send it straight into my mouth. There’s something so satisfying to me about biting into freshly made mochi. It’s warm and soft with a pleasant Q texture, and the peanut coating adds the perfect subtle sweetness and nutty aroma. Although the amount of peanut mochi I could eat in a single sitting as a kid might be a little concerning, it was one of the purest joys I had. 

Now living in New York as an adult, I no longer have my nanny around, nor do I have the privilege of having fresh mochi carts in my neighborhood like we did in Taipei. But I figured out how to make my own mochi using ingredients found in Asian grocery stores here on the other side of the globe so I can recreate my sweetest childhood memories anytime I get the craving.