Trader Joe's Vs My/Mochi: Which Has The Better Mochi Ice Cream?

If there's one variety of ice cream that's been on the up-and-up in recent years, it's mochi. Mochi ice cream has an outer layer of rice flour dough surrounding a puck of frozen ice cream. The glutinous rice flour gives the treat a distinct chewiness that not many other frozen dessert creations can boast. Though invented in the late 1900s, it only became ubiquitous in recent years and is still considered an ice cream novelty to much of the public.

Nowadays, you don't have to make a trip to your local Asian ethnic market to get your hands on this type of ice cream because you can find it in the ice cream section of your local grocery store. As an avid consumer of these frozen treats, I decided to compare two of the major brands, My/Mochi and Trader Joe's, to see which brand produced a better mochi ice cream. A good mochi ice cream needs to have harmony between the chewy rice cake coating and the ice cream in its center. There should be a slight bit of chew to the rice, compounded by a creamy, sweet, and delicious ice cream filling. 

My/Mochi is one of the most widely available mochi ice creams available at grocery stores across the country and one of the earliest players in the game — since 1993. My/Mochi boasts an impressive array of flavors, including everything from traditional Asian-inspired flavors like green tea and ube to s'mores and dulce de leche. You may even find some non-dairy selections in the freezer aisle at your local grocery store. These desserts are known for their fluffy texture and generous ice cream centers. 

Like the Trader Joe's mochi ice cream, the My/Mochi flavors that I sampled — passion fruit and strawberry — come in a six-pack, each weighing 1.25 ounces. The passion fruit flavor has 80 calories per piece, while the strawberry contains 70 calories per mochi ice cream. 

The price of one box stood at $6.49, which was slightly more expensive than the Trader Joe's selection, and there were only three flavors available at my local grocery store: cookies and cream, strawberry, and passion fruit — the latter two of which I sampled for this review. With such a large selection of flavors in production, I was a little sad to see that all of my local grocery stores (not just the one I bought these from) carried only these three flavors. 

Trader Joe's has proved in recent years that it can make products that are just as good as the name-brand options. But would its mochi ice cream also stand up to this test, especially considering that the product was launched several years after My/Mochi in 2001?

As expected, Trader Joe's carries a significantly smaller selection of flavors than My/Mochi. Its pared-down list includes the likes of vanilla, strawberry, coffee, caramel apple, chocolate, and green tea. This small selection might be fine if you're just haphazardly adding items to your Trader Joe's cart, but it may not be someone's go-to stop specifically for mochi ice cream. 

These mochi ice cream boxes are priced at $4.99, and at first glance, they all appear to be a bit larger in size. While the My/Mochi look like soft, plush dumplings, these take on a little more of a flat pancake shape. Each green tea and strawberry mochi ice cream contains 80 calories each, which makes it nutritionally comparable to the My/Mochi that I sampled. 

Strawberry can either go one of two ways: It can taste beautiful and soft, like a little shiver of berry essence wrapping you in a light hug, or it can feel like you're getting shoved into a locker by your high school bully and getting your lunch money stolen. My/Mochi went with the latter — and I can say that it actually did wonders for this flavor in the grand scheme of things. 

This mochi ice cream tastes a little like the strawberry shortcake Good Humor bar I remember buying from an ice cream truck when I was a kid. It's very sweet and very strawberry-forward. Though, the strawberry flavor doesn't taste syrupy or overtly cloying. Rather, it's just really bold. I was glad it didn't have that overwhelmingly sugary aftertaste that I was expecting. The soft, rice flour dough cushions the blow of the strawberry and ends the aftertaste before it can absolutely ruin everything.

While Trader Joe's went really creamy with its strawberry flavor, My/Mochi decided to prioritize the fruity side of things, and I think that really pushed this flavor ahead in the review. The mochi ice cream is well constructed, and the fruity ice cream center is satisfying — but still sends you back into the container to grab another bite. Even though I'm not a big fan of strawberry anything, I can appreciate the balance of flavors that My/Mochi brought to the dessert table. 

Strawberry is far from my favorite ice cream flavor — so I wasn't exactly thrilled to sample this offering from Trader Joe's. The first thing I noticed about the mochi ice cream was that its rice flour dough was pasty and gummy, unlike the firm coating of My/Mochi. When I bit into this ice cream, I noticed a clear separation between the mochi layer and the ice cream, almost like it was under-filled. The whole mochi came apart with an unimaginable stickiness that sent me licking my fingers to ensure that whatever coating on the outside had been fully removed. Unlike MyMochi, I could peel the entire skin off Trader Joe's mochi ice cream to get to the center. I also think the rice flour dough may have been strawberry-flavored, but it's not punchy enough to convince me it actually is. 

The ice cream itself was creamy, just like Trader Joe's green tea mochi ice cream, but the flavor was not very strong. The strawberry ice creams that have impressed me in the past contained chunks of flavorful strawberries interspersed in the pint — this one had a strawberry essence in the cream filling that made it taste slightly artificial. If Trader Joe's marketed this flavor as "strawberries and cream," I would have been more sold on it conceptually. But it misses all the marks for a quality mochi ice cream.

When was the last time you had passion fruit ice cream? If you're like me, the answer is "never." So, I didn't really know what I was walking into for this tasting's wild card round.

The skin of this mochi ice cream takes on an absolutely beautiful purple hue — almost like one of the brand's ube-flavored ice cream treats. The inside of this treat, however, adorned a beautiful orange color that made me think it was straight out of the tropics. Like all the other mochi ice cream I sampled for this tasting, this one didn't really have a particular aroma. But the flavor itself was extremely passion fruit-forward. I don't tend to enjoy tropical-flavored treats, but this one really put the pedal to the metal.

Moreover, I felt that the passion-fruit-flavored ice cream imparted almost a furry aftertaste, kind of like the feeling of biting into an unripe banana and feeling that filminess on the back of your teeth afterward. It wasn't the most pleasant, but it made me think the brand used real passion fruit in this product. I appreciated how the mochi skin softened when I bit into it and stayed with the ice cream rather than breaking off like it did with Trader Joe's strawberry flavor. 

For this flavor, My/Mochi clearly went bold yet again. It would be a great match for someone who loves tropical-flavored sweets, which is admittedly not me. 

I admit I'm not super familiar with the taste of green tea. My go-to coffee shop order isn't green tea, and I haven't delved into the tea world much. Yet, I can say that even if I was obsessed with all things green tea, I wouldn't particularly love this offering from Trader Joe's. 

The first thing I found interesting about this product was that it came in almost a clamshell container, whereas the strawberry mochi ice cream came in a corrugated cardboard-like base with a clear plastic film on top. When I took a whiff of the mochi ice cream, I didn't detect much by the way of aroma. The rice flour dough was soft, supple, and easy to bite into, which was nice. It didn't come off all the way like the brand's strawberry mochi ice cream, either.

The green tea ice cream itself was very soft and like a little nibble of green tea. I'm grateful that it didn't taste overtly medicinal or pungent, but there was a slight grassiness on the back of the palate. I also appreciated that it was not overwhelmingly sweet. The ice cream was creamy, but sugar wasn't the most prominent flavor at play. Overall, this ice cream embodied the word "meh." Its flavor is so inoffensive that it didn't leave a lasting impression. In other words, this product did not convince me to jump on the green tea train. 

Despite My/Mochi and Trader Joe's valiant effort in this race, one brand surged high above the other. My/Mochi's build and structure beat Trader Joe's by a landslide with its thicker rice flour dough, which lent itself well to the overall mouthfeel of the treat. Trader Joe's mochi ice cream seemed a bit rushed in design. The outer layer was very thin, and there was a substantial gap between the ice cream and the dough with the strawberry option. It was almost like Trader Joe's added the skin as an afterthought while trying to use up leftover ice cream. 

Since Trader Joe's coffee boba ice cream is one of my all-time favorites, I thought Trader Joe's had it in the bag when it came to the ice cream of these treats. But Trader Joe's was really conservative with the ice cream flavors here: Both the strawberry and the green tea flavors were subtle and light rather than bold and challenging. Although it was risky for My/Mochi to pack in all that passion fruit flavor, it successfully offered a unique and irresistible flavor to try out of curiosity alone. That's the hallmark of a great novelty product.

Choosing ice cream flavors I wouldn't usually go for allowed me to weigh the pros and cons of each brand effectively. While I don't see myself buying passion fruit, green tea, or strawberry mochi ice cream ever again, the brand I will be adding to my cart when I'm craving this particular novelty is My/Mochi.