This wonderful cake combines the delight of banana bread with the gooeyness of Japanese mochi. So we called it “mochi banana bread”! It’s a quick and easy recipe that’ll surprise you, and we hope it will become your new favourite breakfast loaf!
How do you make banana bread with mochi? Our recipe starts from the classic banana loaf cake but uses a combo of rice and mochi flour instead of wheat flour. So yes, it’s fully gluten-free!
Mochi flour is called mochigomeko in Japan, and it’s made from mochigome rice. And what’s that? Mochigome is a type of short-grain rice that’s incredibly high in starch.
This special rice is also known as glutinous rice or sweet sticky rice outside Japan. And because it’s so high in starch, it turns sticky and gluey (hence “glutinous”) when cooked.
As it turns out, flour milled from glutinous rice also turns sticky and gluey! It is this very flour that makes the famous Japanese mochi balls so irresistibly chewy and stretchy.
Using glutinous rice flour (mochi flour) in this banana bread means you’ll have a moister crumb that’s also a little sticky and gooey. So unique and delicious!
Of course, you can’t use mochi flour alone in a cake this size, or it will be too dense and gummy.
So, we paired it with regular rice flour, which keeps the recipe gluten-free and adds a hint of sweetness to the banana bread.
Here are a few more handy notes on the ingredients used:
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Overripe bananas
They should be so ripe the peel looks blackish. This means the bananas are soft and super sweet, making the cake batter thick, creamy, and sweet.
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Tinned coconut milk
We used it as a dairy replacement to make our cake vegan and dairy-free. It also tastes very good in this recipe!
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Baking powder
As this banana bread has no eggs, it needs an extra kick to rise. So, we used a little more baking powder than usual to help the rice loaf grow nicely.
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Sweetener
You can use sugar or swap it with erythritol sweetener if you want to keep the sugars low. Erythritol is a natural sweetener that tastes and looks like sugar but has no calories — and works perfectly in bakes!
Wondering how this mochi loaf tastes?
It bursts with flavour from bananas and coconut milk with a hint of rice flour sweetness. It’s so spongy, and at the same time, deliciously moist and gooey. You’ll love it!
For more sweet treats with mochi flour, check out these stretchy mochi waffles or these mochi cookies with a gooey heart. So good!
And if you’d like to use mochi in savoury recipes instead, check out these mochi flour bread rolls for inspiration.