Mochi Cream [Japan]

I've never seen a more beautiful green ball. Mochi Cream is a Japanese chain that sells mochi balls of all sorts of flavors. The stores sell them direct from a freezer hidden someplace below the counter, and tell you pretty specifically not to eat them immediately, allowing 10 minutes for the mochi to defrost. It's quite a waiting period, staring at that delicious little ball, holding yourself back from oral satisfaction...

Taste:

I guess I forgot to explain what exactly mochi is. Traditionally, it's really anything wrapped in a congealed rice wrapper, usually formed into a ball, and almost always served as some sort of dessert. Traditional mochi has a red bean, green bean, or mashed lotus seed center. Now Mochi Cream takes the idea and puts its own spin on things, injecting a cream just inside of the rice wrapper in an attempt to pair whatever inner flavor might be hidden within. Here's the dissected version of the Green Tea flavor at Mochi Cream:

The rice wrapper is pretty much tasteless in all mochi--the taste comes from what lies within. The cream at Mochi Cream is nothing spectacular--simple cream, with slightly more substance than your Cool Whip. The green on the inside is (I think) a green tea cream of some sort. As with most things Japanese, the best part of this dessert comes in the itty bitty details: in this case, the green powder you see covering the congealed rice skin. It wasn't anything complicated either, just a simple green tea flavoring agent that spread that taste throughout the mochi ball. Yet, the slight graininess of that agent paired perfectly with the chewy, goopy texture of the mochi skin. An excellent partnership.

Reflections:

As an aside, I'll also mention that I tried two other flavors: their milk tea and cafe au lait. Both of which were quite good, but both weren't quite as good as the green tea. They were and tasted of pretty much what one would expect out of a coffee and milk tea flavored anything. That powder on the green tea ball was what made it for me.

Of course, that's not to say that the others weren't good. Au contraire, Mochi Cream was a delicious experience, one that I'd hope to chance upon again in the future.