One of my students is gluten intolerant so I wanted to develop a fluffy cupcake recipe to use in class. After all, she didn’t choose the gluten-free life! These cupcakes use glutinous rice flour and have a lovely soft texture.
We had made mochi in class before, so I got the idea of using glutinous rice flour instead of normal flour. In the past I’ve eaten really dense gluten-free treats, so making it soft and fluffy was the goal. Using good quality eggs and beating it on high with sugar is the key to making light and fluffy gluten-free cupcakes.
The best part was decorating the cupcakes with Easter decorations. They made the cupcakes super cute! I used my bunny snowskin mooncake recipe to make the bunnies on top – these were a huge hit with the kids!
Give these glulten-free mochi cupcakes a go! Tag your cupcake creations with @ultimateomnoms on Instagram, I’d love to see it and give you a shoutout.

Soft gluten-free mochi cupcakes
Ingredients
- 240 g glutinous rice flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 60g coconut milk or any milk
- 60g oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 8 large eggs
- 220g castor sugar
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: glutinous rice flour, baking powder and salt
- In another bowl, mix together the wet ingredients: milk, oil and vanilla extract
- Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and thick. It should be at the ribbon stage. To test this, lift the whisk and the batter should fall back in “ribbon” trails, remaining on top of the batter for a few seconds before disappearing into the batter
- Gradually and gently fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Some of the air will deflate from the eggs but it is more important that no streaks of flour remain
- In the same way, fold the wet ingredients into the batter
- Pour the batter into the prepared cupcakes tins
- Bake at 180°C for 25min
- Rest for 10 min before transferring the cupcakes to a cooling rack