Yukimi Daifuku

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Japanese snack food
Yukimi daifuku


Japanese name	雪見だいふく
Maker	Lotte
Ingredients	ice cream, mochi
Flavours: vanilla, strawberry, green tea.

Yukimi Daifuku (Japanese: 雪見だいふく "snow-viewing daifuku") is a brand of mochi ice cream manufactured by the Japanese/Korean company Lotte. It consists of a ball of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of mochi, or rice cake. Lotte originally created Wataboshi (Japanese: わたぼうし "cotton hat or capped with snow"), a bite-size ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of marshmallow in 1980. Marshmallow was quickly replaced by mochi because it is more popular in Japan and the company perfected a technology to keep mochi soft at freezing temperature in 1981.

It comes in three sizes: a carton containing two pieces of ice cream, with a plastic pick for eating it; a "mini yukimi daifuku" box with nine smaller ice creams; and "yukimi daifuku petit three colour box" (雪見だいふくプチ3色) containing three kinds, a green tea ice cream, a chocolate ice cream, and a vanilla ice cream.

In the hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season, a seasonal variety with strawberry ice cream is sold.

Yukimi is a seasonal activity in Japan, similar to hanami (cherry blossom viewing), consisting of watching snow falling. The name is a play upon tsukimi daifuku (月見大福, "moon-viewing daifuku"), the sweets traditionally eaten while viewing the moon.