Welcome to Bon Appétit Bake Club, a community of curious bakers. Each month senior Test Kitchen editors Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic share a must-make recipe and dive deep on why it works. Come bake and learn with us—and don’t forget to join the Bake Club Group chat over on Substack.
Sunflower yellow on the inside with an alluringly bouncy bite, this sweet corn mochi cake tastes like buttered corn on the cob, nutty caramel, and toasted coconut. A gentle resistance and slight elasticity make butter mochi a tactile experience. Taking the place of conventional flour, sweet rice flour is the key ingredient and the secret behind butter mochi’s singular texture (and the reason it’s gluten-free). Think about the moreish qualities of the Southeast Asia dessert mango sticky rice—sweet rice flour brings that same viscosity, just in powder form. Regular rice flour is not a suitable substitute, nor is wheat flour. Koda Farms Mochiko or Bob’s Red Mill sweet white rice flours are easy to find in North American grocery stores. Thai glutinous rice flour also works. Celebrate the bounty of summer using fresh corn, but frozen works well too. The crunchy topping is loosely modeled after drømekkage (Danish dream cake), a vanilla sponge with a caramel icing featuring shredded coconut. Try not to stir the mixture too much after the coconut is added because it may crystallize. You will doubt the process when you pour the hot topping over the cake, but smooth it out as best you can with a spatula. After the brief bake, you will be a convert.
Read More: BA Bake Club’s July Recipe Turns Summer Corn Into a Delightfully Bouncy Dessert
Recipe information
Total Time
1½ hours
Yield
10–12 servings
Ingredients
Cake
Topping and assembly
Preparation
Cake
Step 1
Place a rack in middle of oven; preheat to 325°. Lightly coat an 8" or 9" square baking pan with nonstick vegetable oil spray. Line bottom with parchment paper and lightly coat parchment with nonstick spray. Melt ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a blender; reserve pan.
Step 2
Add 2 large eggs, one 14-oz. can condensed milk, 2½ cups fresh (or frozen, thawed) corn kernels (from about 3 cobs), ½ cup milk, 1 Tbsp. vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract, and 2 tsp. Diamond Crystal or 1¼ tsp. Morton kosher salt and blend until mostly smooth with no whole pieces of corn left, about 4 minutes.
Step 3
Whisk 2 cups (302 g) mochiko (sweet rice flour) and 1½ tsp. baking powder in a large bowl to combine. Add purée and whisk until combined and smooth, about 2 minutes. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth surface with offset spatula if needed.
Step 4
Bake cake until just set and top is light golden around the edges, 40–45 minutes.
Topping and assembly
Step 5
Just before cake is done baking, bring ¼ cup (50 g) sugar, 3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, 1 Tbsp. milk, and a large pinch of kosher salt to a simmer in reserved saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, and cook (still stirring) until sugar is dissolved, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in ⅔ cup unsweetened coconut flakes.
Step 6
Remove cake from oven and immediately pour topping over. Using an offset spatula, smooth across surface to cover evenly, spreading all the way to the edges.
Step 7
Return cake to oven and bake until topping is golden brown, 15–18 minutes.
Transfer pan to a wire rack and let cake cool 20 minutes in pan. Turn cake out onto rack and let cool completely. Cut into squares to serve.
Do Ahead: Cake can be made 1 day ahead. Store, loosely covered, at room temperature .
