My/Mochi Flavors, Ranked

There are seemingly endless ways to consume your favorite ice cream or sorbet. From a classic cone, to inside a cookie sandwich or straight from the pint container, any method that allows us to enjoy a frozen treat is great in our book. For those looking for a more unique spin on dessert, at least as far as many Americans are concerns and perhaps one that offers easy portion control, you may want to check out mochi ice cream balls.

Mochi is a sweet, sticky rice dough that has been popular in Japan for centuries. Mochi balls are filled with seemingly everything from red bean pastes to jams, while they can also be flavored with fruits, teas, and sometimes even vegetables. Today, Los Angeles-based company My/Mochi has continued the tradition with an American spin by making ice cream into hand-held treats packed inside small, doughy balls. To celebrate the launch of two dairy-free sorbet flavors — those would be Raspberry and Peach-Mango — My/Mochi sent Mashed the two new flavors along with eight of the company's more classic offerings. I tried them all and ranked them according to taste, texture, and appearance to help you choose the mochi that's a perfect fit for your palate.

The Matcha Green Tea easily stood out as the most aggressively-flavored and potent of the samples I received. It's worth remembering that this is a subjective rating, and, as someone who loves green tea but admittedly dislikes matcha, this was not for me. The taste is earthy and somewhat bitter, and it contains by far the fewest sweet notes of anything on this list. That said, if your preferences lean more towards savory rather than sweet, and especially if you're already a fan of matcha on its own or in other treats, then this 80-calorie mochi ball might just be for you.

In its favor, I thought that the bright green coloring both inside and out make this one of the more visually appealing offerings on the list. The ice cream is smooth, and the mochi remains soft but sturdy in the freezer. With Matcha Green Tea clocking in as the fourth ingredient in the ice cream, matcha fans might enjoy this flavor, but anyone looking for a sweet ice cream experience should read on.

While matcha isn't one of my personal favorites, cereal absolutely is. I love the sweet milk left at the bottom of the bowl, so I was excited to try this flavor, but it left a lot to be desired. The box promises "graham cereal flavored ice cream," but the end result came across as more of an artificial butter flavor. Without knowing what the taste was supposed to be thanks to the box, one might mistake it for a sideways attempt at buttered popcorn rather than cereal and milk.

Once again, the picture on the box depicts texture in the ice cream, but the real ice cream is quite smooth. Some speckles of what appear to be graham cracker pieces in the picture would be a welcome addition to the treat, Their absence left me wanting more. The lack of graham cracker pieces is especially confusing given that a graham cracker blend is the fourth ingredient listed after the ice cream staples of milk, cream, and sugar. Grab a bowl, spoon, and actual cereal if you're looking for that iconic milky flavor, and leave this mochi offering on the shelf.

With this taste being a staple on any ice cream counter, it's almost impossible to be disappointed by cookies and cream, but My/Mochi's attempt at the classic falls a bit short. The color of the mochi isn't quite right, for one; it's more of a pale gray, which is a missed opportunity to use dark cocoa powder to give this variation a more well-known cookie-colored exterior. Inside, the ice cream is smooth and has a similar gray tint. However, unlike the picture on the box, it contains no cookie chunks to offer texture or extra flavor. That's a real a shame as flavor is in short supply here.

The ice cream tastes watered down, similar to the effect freezer burn has on an improperly stored carton. With a muted taste and bland appearance, this flavor is cookies and cream in name only. It doesn't taste bad, but if I was offered this variety in a blind taste test, I might have mistaken this flavor for an underwhelming vanilla. And at 90 calories per piece, which is more than both the matcha and cereal flavors, you might as well find something that more boldly fulfills the promise of cookies and cream.

The first of the two new flavors (as of this writing) was a definite departure from My/Mochi's classic ice cream centers. A purple mochi covering gives way to a bright pink sorbet interior with a nice texture, which is icier than the creamy ice cream in other My/Mochi varieties but not overly frozen. The shortfall to the Raspberry Sorbet is the flavor — it is intense. Sour is the first note that hits before an overwhelming berry taste takes over, leaving a slightly acidic aftertaste. The image on the box once again hints at an interior with texture, but this sorbet is smooth, with no fruit pieces or even raspberry seeds to distract from the intense bite.

This flavor could just as easily be blackberry or mixed berry, but the color helps drive home the notion that it is raspberry. Given sorbet's fruit-forward profile, this flavor would have worked better with some dairy to cut down on the sourness, be it as a full ice cream or the middleman between sorbet and ice cream, sherbet. To top it off, each Raspberry Sorbet ball is 70 calories, which is significantly more than the Peach-Mango sorbet that debuted at the same time as this flavor.

A close cousin to cookies and cream, cookie dough is another standard-setter in the ice cream world. My/Mochi's version is billed as a "cookie dough flavored ice cream" that subverts the usual practice of chunky cookie dough pieces, opting to let the ice cream carry the taste with just a few tiny chocolate chips present for texture. The result is a sweet and enjoyable bite, though I found that there aren't enough chocolate chips to offer a real crunch of any kind.

Once again, the box is misleading. The ice cream image shows chocolate chips and chunks of dough inside the mochi, but the dough was nowhere to be found in an individual bite. Instead, it's mixed into the ice cream, similar to the Cookies and Cream approach. Unlike the Cereal and Milk flavor, the Cookie Dough mochi balls are buttery in a pleasant way. Like everything else on the first half of this list, these mochi balls aren't bad (in fact, they're quite tasty) but they fail to live up to the promise of the image on the box and their overall potential.

While My/Mochi gets credit for experimenting with some more unique flavors, it excels when things remain simple. Bubble-gum pink both inside and out, the strawberry mochi balls are fruity and very sweet. Once again, the picture on the box depicts the ice cream with some texture, possibly the result of strawberry chunks that have been blended into the mix, but the product itself was actually smooth throughout. Still, the flavor is unmistakably strawberry. Those looking for a more subtle fruit flavor may want to turn elsewhere because this level of sweetness gives off some serious candy vibes.

It's worth noting that, for all entries on this list, the main flavor comes entirely from the ice cream. With the exception of added colors — all of which are natural — the mochi itself is the same across the board and very simple when it comes to ingredients. Cane sugar, water, sweet rice flour, egg whites, corn starch, and a stabilizer comprise every outer mochi layer. For the Strawberry mochi, the color comes courtesy of beet juice concentrate.

Fans of tropical flavors will enjoy the My/Mochi mango. Sporting a bright yellow exterior and interior that runs close to the brilliant hues of the actual fruit, this flavor screams sunshine and sandy beaches. As a mango fan, I could have actually gone for a more intense mango flavor, since the vibe was more akin to a tropical drink than a fresh piece of fruit. Still, My/Mochi clearly knows how to handle mango since this isn't the last time the flavor will appear on this list.

For those with dietary restrictions, mochi balls are a convenient snack. All My/Mochi balls are soy and gluten-free, made in the United States, and each mochi ball contains 90 calories or less. As an ice cream fan, mochi isn't a direction I would generally go to get my frozen fix, but the soft, chewy texture of the mochi paired with bright flavors like mango have this dessert rocketing up my summertime snack list.

In 2023, Mashed conducted a survey to determine the superior flavor of ice cream and a tried and true classic came out on top: vanilla.  Vanilla ice cream is almost always a safe bet, but high-quality vanilla can elevate everything around it, which is exactly the case with this mochi ball. Real vanilla beans are evident not only from the taste but also from the small speckles that permeate the ice cream. The mochi itself isn't flavored, but that's not a problem, as the vanilla bean ice cream does all of the heavy lifting.

While the Cookies and Cream flavor was pale gray both inside and out, the Vanilla Bean is covered in a bright white mochi that looks clean and offers a nice contrast to the speckled ice cream. If you're looking to mix and match flavors, I would highly recommend snagging a box of Vanilla Bean and reading on because it pairs perfectly with my number one flavor.

While the Raspberry Sorbet was marred by an overly intense flavor, My/Mochi nailed the ratios in its Mango-Peach Sorbet. Pale green on the outside and bright orange inside, each bite delivers on just about every promise it makes. Once again, the texture that I saw in the sorbet image on the box is nowhere to be found, but that hardly matters as each bite conjures a perfect blend of peach and mango flavors in a creamy sorbet that might just owe its texture to the mango puree that helps to provide the flavor. If you're looking for a non-dairy entry into the world of mochi balls, this is an especially nice place to start.

Plus, at only 45 calories, this is by far the least calorie-dense of My/Mochi's offerings, making this a pleasant treat for anyone who's watching those numbers. In my tasting, I found that the best fruit flavors to pair with mochi came on the more tropical end of the spectrum. With both the Mango ice cream and Mango-Peach Sorbet cracking the top half of the ranking, it's worth hoping that as My/Mochi continues to expand its offerings, it looks to more island-inspired flavors.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to choose a favorite, but My/Mochi's Double Chocolate made it easy. Creamy chocolate ice cream and a generous, but not overwhelming, quantity of chocolate pieces make this flavor the clear winner. Like every other flavor, the mochi itself is not flavored despite its rich brown color, provided by a combination of purple carrot juice, caramel color, and beet juice concentrate. The Double Chocolate is all about the ice cream, where the chocolate pieces and chocolate ice cream create a delectable combination.

This was actually the first flavor that I noticed the smell of after taking my first bite, which only added to the experience. The richness of the chocolate flavor borders on fudgy, which, when paired with the chewy mochi, creates a mouthfeel that is reminiscent of a brownie à la mode. While it's not difficult to make your own mochi ice cream balls at home, you will be hard-pressed to make something that stacks up with My/Mochi's Double Chocolate perfection.

All samples were mailed to our reviewer by My/Mochi. During sampling, each ball was cut in half to assess color and texture and then sampled in a random order, one after the other, with enough time in between to clear away any lingering flavors. Neither Mashed nor the author was compensated by My/Mochi for the review.