a donutMochi donut
also: pon de ring · poi mochi
Eight balls in a ring, and you pull it apart rather than bite it.
A chewy donut made with glutinous rice flour or tapioca flour, usually formed as a ring of eight connected balls that pull apart. Moist, springy, and heavier in the hand than it looks.
The story Cited · wp-mochi-donut
An early version traces to Hawaii in 1992, when Charmaine Ocasek made poi mochi — deep-fried balls of mashed taro and mochiko, Japanese sweet rice flour. In 2003 the Japanese chain Mister Donut launched pon de ring, named for the Brazilian cheese bread pão de queijo, and that eight-ball shape is the one that travelled: Japan, then Hawaii, then the mainland. Hawaii tends to pick up Japanese food before the rest of the country does.
Epicurious has pointed out the tangle in the name: neither pon de ring nor pão de queijo is typically made with glutinous rice flour — both lean on tapioca.
How it is done Cited · wp-mochi-donut
Rice or tapioca flour batter, piped as eight touching balls onto paper, fried, then iced in bright flavours.
Today Cited · wp-mochinut
Mochi donut counters opened across American cities through the 2020s, some as chains, some as a second case inside an older donut shop.
The particulars
| dough | other |
|---|---|
| finish | iced |
| region | Hawaii, Southern California, The United States |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Who it runs with
Who talks about it
Where we got it
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.