Asian desserts are where I do most of my experimenting because it’s my comfort zone, but I also just LOVE Asian sweets! Chewy, stretchy, jiggly, custardy. Half of these barely need an oven, and a bunch of them lean on a store bought shortcut to get you 90 percent of the way there with about a tenth of the work.
So here are 36 of my favorites, grouped by the flavors I keep coming back to. Mochi and rice pudding, ube, matcha, and then everything else worth knowing about. Some are five minute hacks and some are more legit weekend bakes. Every single one is something I actually like and keep in my rotation. 😋
Jump to a recipe
- Mochi and Chewy Rice Desserts
- Ube Desserts
- 10. 3-Ingredient Ube Croissants
- 11. Gooey Ube-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
- 12. Ube Japanese Cheesecake in a Rice Cooker
- 13. Ube Oreo Mini Cheesecakes
- 14. Homemade Ube Oreo Ice Cream
- 15. King’s Hawaiian Ube Ice Cream Sandwiches
- 16. Ube Oreo Rice Krispie Treats
- 17. Ube Dubai Chocolate Bar with Toasted Coconut
- 18. Rice Cooker Ube Coconut Rice Pudding
- 19. Viral Ube Cloud Bread
- 20. Ube Blended Baked Oats
- Matcha Desserts
- 21. Matcha Crepe Cake
- 22. Baked Mini Matcha Cheesecakes
- 23. Matcha Yogurt Cake
- 24. Matcha Strawberry Rice Krispies Treats
- 25. No-Bake Matcha Cake Pops
- 26. Matcha Cake Balls
- 27. Matcha Muddy Buddies (Puppy Chow)
- 28. Chocolate-Filled Matcha Rice Paper Croissant
- 29. Viral Flat Croissants with Matcha Chocolate
- 30. Red Bean Matcha Chocolate Cups
- Black Sesame, Pandan and More
Mochi and Chewy Rice Desserts
Chewy is the whole reason I got into this stuff in the first place! Sweet rice flour behaves nothing like wheat flour, so you’ll get that stretch and bounce you can’t fake with anything else. These are the ones I hand people when they say they don’t really like dessert.
1. Easy Whole Mango Mochi
You bite through a pillowy, barely sweet shell and hit cool, soft, honey sweet mango. The mochi is a thin, stretchy wrapper hugging a big slab of fruit, so the mango stays the star and the chewy layer just carries it. This is the one I make when I want something that looks like it took real skill, and it takes almost none!
2. Strawberry Rice Paper Mochi
No cooking, no rice flour, about five minutes start to finish. You soften a sheet of rice paper, spoon in sweet whipped cream and chopped strawberries, fold it into a little pouch, and you get that soft, stretchy, mochi like bite without ever turning on the stove. It’s the easiest entry point on this whole list, and I use it constantly.
3. Chewy Mochi-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
A two ingredient hack that still gets me. You wrap store bought cookie dough around a few pieces of mini mochi, seal it into a ball, and bake until golden. The edges stay crispy while the mochi center turns soft, gooey and stretchy, so you’ll get that slow pull when you break one open. Eat them warm, I’m telling you.
4. Easy Mitarashi Dango Recipe
Being half Japanese, these are the ones that hit different for me. Chewy rice dumplings on a skewer, brushed in a sweet and salty soy glaze that thickens up glossy. They’re especially good freshly made while they’re still warm, gooey and chewy in the best ways possible, so I eat them standing at the counter!
5. Chapssal Donuts (Korean Sweet Rice Donuts)
The outside gets properly crispy when you fry them, but the inside stays warm, soft and chewy, almost like mochi or dango. That contrast is what I’m there for. Plus they get rolled in sugar while they’re still hot, so the coating grabs on and cracks a little when you bite in.
6. Mango Butter Mochi
Chewy, buttery, custardy, and tasting like a warm afternoon in Hawaii. That’s what you get here, and the mango jam rippled through it makes it even better. Butter mochi is a Hawaiian invention built on Japanese mochiko, and it’s one of the easiest showstoppers you can carry into a party.
7. Chewy Banana Butter Mochi
It bakes into a pan of squares that are chewy and custardy in the middle with a lightly crisp, cakey crust. The banana keeps it mellow and soft rather than sugary, and these disappear fast in my house. If you’ve got overripe bananas sitting on the counter, this beats banana bread and it’s not close.
8. Chewy Pumpkin Butter Mochi
Everything I love about that chewy, custardy Hawaiian classic, just wrapped in cozy fall flavor, so every square has the same stretchy mochi meets cake bite. Chewy center, lightly crisp golden crust, and it might be the easiest showstopper you bring to Thanksgiving. I’d take a pan of this over pumpkin pie every single year.
9. Fudgy Mint Mochi Brownies
Cool peppermint folded into a fudgy chocolate brownie built on sweet rice flour instead of regular flour, so every square bakes up dense and fudgy. Mine came out more fudgy than the bouncy chew you might be picturing, and with a white chocolate drizzle and crushed candy cane on top they land right in holiday treat territory.
Ube Desserts
Ube is purple yam, and if you’ve never cooked with it, the flavor is mellow, earthy and a little vanilla like. It’s nothing like taro even though people mix them up constantly. The color does half the work and the flavor does the rest.
10. 3-Ingredient Ube Croissants
Buttery, flakey dough with that jammy ube filling, and only three ingredients standing between you and it. Using a quality store bought puff pastry gets you those perfect crispy layers without any of the lamination work, which is the easiest way ethos in one pastry. They look like you fussed for hours.
11. Gooey Ube-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
A quick Filipino American mashup. You wrap store bought cookie dough around a spoonful of sweet ube halaya, seal it into a ball, and bake until golden. What I get every time is a golden cookie with a gooey purple center, and they come together in under 30 minutes.
12. Ube Japanese Cheesecake in a Rice Cooker
Cotton soft, subtly sweet and gorgeously purple, with a faint purple sweet potato flavor running through it. It’s so much lighter and bouncier than a regular slice, more like an airy sponge cake than anything rich, with just a whisper of tang. And the rice cooker does every bit of the work for you!
13. Ube Oreo Mini Cheesecakes
If you love a dense, rich cheesecake, the kind that slices clean and tastes like it came out of a bakery case, these little ube ones are going to get you. I love a buttery Oreo cookie crust, and paired with that rich purple ube filling, and because they’re individual nobody is fighting over the last slice.
14. Homemade Ube Oreo Ice Cream
Rich purple yam ice cream you can churn in about 20 minutes, with crushed Oreos folded all the way through. The ube brings that mellow, earthy sweetness that makes the whole scoop taste more interesting than a standard cookies and cream. SO good on a hot day, and the color alone is worth the effort.
15. King’s Hawaiian Ube Ice Cream Sandwiches
This turns buttery, toasted sweet rolls into a dreamy summer dessert. The buns come out buttery, warm and crispy at the edges, then you pack them with ice cream so you’ll get the hot and cold thing happening in the same bite. Ridiculous in the best way, and it’s my go to when people come over!
16. Ube Oreo Rice Krispie Treats
I was craving that earthy purple yam flavor but I was too lazy to bake that day, lol. The ube pairs perfectly with the crispy Rice Krispies, and the Oreo Thins add a chocolatey creaminess that ties it all together. One pot, about fifteen minutes, and the color is unreal.
17. Ube Dubai Chocolate Bar with Toasted Coconut
Instead of pistachio and kataifi, you line a chocolate bar mold with melted milk chocolate, fill it with toasted shredded coconut folded into ube halaya, then seal it with more chocolate. The toasted coconut plus sweet purple yam gives you a crunchy, creamy filling inside a snappy shell.
18. Rice Cooker Ube Coconut Rice Pudding
Eaten straight from the cooker the rice is fluffy and coconutty with distinct grains, or you blend it with hot water for a smooth, creamy pudding. Two completely different desserts out of one pot, and the rice cooker handles it while you do nothing at all. The rice cooker doing all the work is the part that still gets me.
19. Viral Ube Cloud Bread
The viral one, in purple. It whips up into something impossibly light and airy that tears apart into soft, marshmallowy strands. Barely sweet, mostly just fun, and the color in person is unreal. I made it once for the photos and then again because it actually tastes good!
20. Ube Blended Baked Oats
Blended oats that bake up like a warm single serve cake, with ube giving it that mellow earthy sweetness. It’s the breakfast that tastes like dessert, which is the correct kind of breakfast in my opinion. Everything goes in a blender, so cleanup is basically nothing. Weekday approved.
Matcha Desserts
Good matcha is grassy and a little bitter, and honestly that bitterness is exactly why it works so well in sweets! It keeps sugar in check instead of piling on top of it. I use culinary grade for baking and save the ceremonial stuff for drinking.
21. Matcha Crepe Cake
Layer after layer of thin crepes with matcha cream between every one, stacked until it slices like a proper cake. It takes patience rather than skill, which is my favorite kind of recipe, and the payoff is a dessert that looks like a bakery window. That gentle earthy matcha keeps it from tipping into too sweet.
22. Baked Mini Matcha Cheesecakes
These are dense, rich and completely ridiculous. Cream cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla, matcha and a spoonful of flour bake up into exactly what you want from a baked cheesecake, just in miniature form. The matcha cuts straight through all that richness, so I can eat two without feeling it!
23. Matcha Yogurt Cake
Jiggly when it comes out of the oven, fluffy when you cut into it, and full of that sweet earthy matcha flavor that hits different in baked form. The yogurt does the real work here, adding moisture, a little tang, and a richness that makes this taste way more complex than five ingredients has any right to.
24. Matcha Strawberry Rice Krispies Treats
Gooey marshmallow and earthy matcha with tangy freeze dried strawberries crushed over the top. The matcha brings a grassy, slightly bitter depth that keeps the marshmallow base from tasting one note sweet, and the strawberries add a fruity pop in every single bite. Fifteen minutes and no oven required.
25. No-Bake Matcha Cake Pops
Waffles blended down into fine crumbs, bound, rolled and dipped. There’s no baking at any point, which is the trick that makes these possible on a weeknight. They come out soft and dense in the middle with a snappy chocolate shell, and the matcha keeps the sweetness from running away.
26. Matcha Cake Balls
Same idea, slightly different route. You blitz the base, roll it into balls, then melt white or dark chocolate and drizzle it over the top. Soft, sweet, earthy from the matcha, and about as forgiving as a dessert gets. Perfect for when I need thirty of something and I need it fast.
27. Matcha Muddy Buddies (Puppy Chow)
A green tea twist on classic puppy chow. You coat crunchy Chex in melted white chocolate mixed with matcha, then shake the whole lot in a bag of matcha powdered sugar. The white chocolate balances the earthy, slightly bitter matcha, and the result is sweet, crunchy and impossible to stop eating.
28. Chocolate-Filled Matcha Rice Paper Croissant
You’ll get a crisp, crunchy exterior and a soft, mochi like chewy middle, kind of like the love child of a croissant and a piece of mochi. This version works earthy matcha into the batter plus a pocket of melted chocolate right in the center. The texture is the point here, and it’s SO good!
29. Viral Flat Croissants with Matcha Chocolate
This Korean flat croissant trend presses a regular croissant into something crispy, caramelized and almost candy like, completely different from where it started. 🤯 Then matcha chocolate goes over the top. All those buttery layers get squashed into one crunchy sheet, and it works far better than it has any business working.
30. Red Bean Matcha Chocolate Cups
Every bite hands you the contrast, matcha chocolate shell on the outside and soft red bean paste in the center. Anko has this earthy, subtly sweet flavor that pairs with matcha the same way it does in classic Japanese sweets like daifuku and dorayaki. Three ingredients and no baking at all.
Black Sesame, Pandan and More
This last group is where I think the most interesting flavors live. Black sesame, pandan, grass jelly and coconut sticky rice are all worth knowing, and I promise none of them are hard to find once you know what you’re looking for.
31. Black Sesame Basque Cheesecake
It bakes up crustless and custardy with a top that goes deep, dark and almost burnt on purpose, and the black sesame gives you this roasted, nutty depth running through all that sweet cream cheese. You bake it hot and fast so the surface caramelizes, and you skip the crust and the water bath completely. It’s way less fuss than it looks!
32. Black Sesame Rice Krispies Treats
A nutty Japanese twist on the classic. You melt butter and marshmallows, stir in freshly ground toasted black sesame, then fold in the cereal. The result is toasty and subtly savory, which keeps it well clear of the usual sugar bomb. About fifteen minutes and no baking.
33. Air Fryer Sweet Potato Sesame Balls
The sweet rice flour gives the inside a soft, stretchy, mochi like chew, while the sesame coating toasts up in the air fryer into a crunchy, nutty shell. Chewy meets crispy, and I’m here for it. Plus they’re naturally sweetened and colored by the sweet potato itself, so there’s no food coloring anywhere near them.
34. Pandan Rice Krispie Treats with White Chocolate
Pandan tastes sweet and toasty with hints of vanilla, coconut and hazelnut all mixed together, and it turns these a gorgeous green. White chocolate goes over the top. If you’ve never cooked with pandan, this is the gentlest possible introduction, and it’s a lot more interesting than the ingredient list suggests.
35. Mango Sticky Rice Spring Rolls
Mango sticky rice is one of my all time favorite desserts, like top 5 easily! There’s something magical about warm coconut sticky rice against cold, juicy, perfectly ripe mango, and rolling it into a spring roll turns it into something you can eat with your hands at a party.
36. Grass Jelly Boba in Homemade Milk Tea
A jiggly, low effort alternative to chewy tapioca pearls. Grass jelly sets on its own in the fridge, so the texture lands soft, slippery and squishy instead of dense and gummy. Drop it into homemade milk tea and you’ve got a drink that eats like a dessert.
If you’re brand new to any of this, start with the strawberry rice paper mochi or the mochi stuffed cookies. Both take about five minutes, neither one needs a specialty ingredient, and they will tell you pretty quickly whether you’re into that chewy texture. Then work your way up to the crepe cake when you’ve got a lazy afternoon to spend.
Which one are you making first? Let me know in the comments!