To Understand These People Understand Their Ddeok (떡)

Heard of people baking cakes and sharing it in times of sorrow? I hadn’t till now…..
Well, this is a place where people make rice cakes and share it even in tragic moments of life…… Korea has this custom where rice cakes are made and shared in both happy and tragic moments in life. When a family makes cakes they are shared with friends as well as the people in the neighborhood. Koreans can tell where a cake is coming from by the color, shape and content. Amazing isn’t it? I can’t tell where a cake is coming from, hmmm…. actually I can when it is delivered in a carton box. Getting back to cakes in Korea, neighbors take this time of sharing traditional cakes to extend their kindliness and kindred spirits to others in the community. Being considered good and delicious cakes are also closely related to all walks of life. Simply put, unless you understand the symbolic meaning of rice cakes, it is hard to understand Korean people’s lives. Ddeok – the everyday process of making boiled rice and porridge. After all this talk about Ddoek, let me share some recipes I found on http://asiarecipe.com/kordesserts.html

Rice-Cake Fruit Cup Ingredients

• 1/2 cup glutinous rice flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 knob ginger
• raisins, pine nuts
• 1 apple
• 1 plum
• 1 peach

Directions
1. Knead the rice flour, salt and hot water into a soft dough Shape the dough into ginko nut-sized pieces. Place some raisins and pine nuts on each piece and re-shape into round balls.
2. Boil the balls in boiling water and rinse them in cold water.
3. Boil the water with the sugar and ginger to make a syrup and let it cool. Them remove the ginger from the syrup. Slice the fruits into bite-sized pieces. Place the rice cake balls, fruit pieces in a bowl and pour on the syrup to serve.

Songpyon (- Half-Moon-Shaped Rice Cake) Ingredients

• 5 cups rice
• 1 tbsp. salt
• food colors
• 2 oz. mug wort
• 10 chestnuts
• 1/2 cup sesame seeds
• 10 jujubes
• 1 cup sweet bean flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. honey
• 2 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1/2 cup sugar

Directions
1. Wash the rice, soak it for a while and drain. Grind the soaked rice very finely adding salt and strain.
2. Peel the chestnuts, boil them and put through a sieve. Pit and chop the jujubes finely. Fry the sesame seeds and simmer the sweet bean flour with 1/2 cup sugar. Then mix each ingredient with salt and honey.
3. Divide the ground rice into there equal parts. Add the food color to one-third along with boiling water and knead it into dough. Add boiled chopped mug wort to the second part and knead. Add boiling water to the rest as it is and knead it into dough.
4. Fill the dough pieces with the #2 filling and shape them into half-moon-shape rice cakes.
5. Stream the half-moon rice cakes and brush them with the sesame oil.