I'd say butter mochi is probably one of my favorite desserts.

Growing up, I knew it as battah mochi, or custard mochi.

Easy to eat, hard to stop eating.

In the islands, our ethnic melting pot has created a diverse community of Ono, or delicious food.

Let's take a closer look at our local cuisine here on ʻOno!

Everyone has their own version of butter mochi family recipes.

Some are more cakey.

Others are a little more dense.

Our family's butter mochi recipe, we like it chewy with like a crispy top.

The top gets very crispy, and then everyone fights over the edges.

The edges are the best!

Preparing butter mochi is a family tradition for Jody and Jenna Chai.

She passed down the recipe to me from her mom, and yeah, that was the first time I started to bake when I was in middle school.

And then from there, I would just make it for my friends, and we would have, like, holiday parties.

It's just a fun dessert to make, and it's really fast, and we would always have the ingredients in the pantry.

So my mom, she would call it custard mochi.

She would make it every so often, because it was a simple, simple dessert to make.

So growing up, yeah, we just would look forward to eating it, but it was pretty much a regular item at a lot of our family get togethers.

The key to butter mochi's addicting taste and texture is its main ingredients, rice flour, coconut milk and melted butter.

Butter mochi is pretty easy to make, you know, I think maybe about 10 different ingredients.

You have to make sure that everything's at room temperature so things don't coagulate.

We mix it all together, and you put it in in the oven.

It bakes for quite a while, though it's it's at least an hour and 15 minutes, you know, to ensure that you cook it thoroughly and and evenly.

For our family, we like the plain butter mochi, but then we'll add that special guava puree or lilikoi puree glaze on the top, just as an added touch to to our mochi.

Butter mochi is unique to Hawaii.

I think some people might think it's a Japanese dessert like from Japan.

The origins of butter mochi are unclear, but the answer may lie in Hawaiʻi's multicultural roots.

The only similarity between butter mochi and regular mochi, I guess, is the mochiko flour.

So you use mochiko flower.

But unlike mochi you know, this is sort of like a mochi cake, I guess I would describe it.

This would be, I think, an example of the influence of the ethnic cultures growing up on the plantation.

And the closest dessert, I would think is bibingka, which is a Filipino dessert.

While it's not exactly like bibingka, I would think it's like, again, like a combination of Japanese and Filipino.

Although its origins may remain a mystery, one thing is for sure, butter mochi has earned its place in the hearts of the chai family.

Yeah, when I come home and we have, you know, get togethers with the family, yeah, she asks me to make it.

And I, of course, say yes, because why not?

I enjoy baking.

I have a Tiktok account called peanut butter mochi, which is kind of funny, because I I created it because I love mochi, all kinds of mochi and so on there.

I I bake, I I cook, and yeah, it's just a fun way to share my culture with everyone around the world.