What is this Japenease desert?

Question

i was flat and pancake shaped, but it was glutinous rice on the outside.

Answer 1

Sounds like moochi to me.

Answer 2

It depends on where you're located. For many people, mochi means balls of filling like red bean paste that is covered by soft & stretchy glutinous rice flour dough, usually dusted with icing sugar.

But there's also mochi made with the glutinous rice itself as the outside covering, which is very popular in Japan especially around the New Year eg. Kyoto's sakura-mochi which is wrapped with a cherry blossom leaf.

As you have mentioned, another more modern form is mochi ice-cream, which personally I think cannot really be considered mochi.

Answer 3

Tangyuan  (pinyin: tāng yúan) is a chinese dessert : Glutinous rice balls filled with sweet fillings such as red bean paste and boiled in plain or sweetened water.

Dorayaki is a type of Japanese confection which consists of two small pancake-like patties made from kasutera wrapped around a filling of sweet red bean paste