Valentines day is coming up soon. Valentines day in Korea is a bit different to most countries’. It is the day for a girl to confess her love to a guy by giving him a chocolate present. Then when does the guy have a chance to confess his love? The guy has a chance to confess his love by giving her some candy presents on so called White day, which is March 14th. Whether you have the chance to confess your love on Valentines day or White day, I think both days in Korea are very commercialized.

However here comes my pure love for you, and my husband of course. I represent my love with these strawberry rice cakes – ddalgi chapssalddeok (딸기 찹쌀떡) in Korean and a type of Mochi in Japan. I decided to join “Monthly Mingle” hosted by What’s for Lunch Honney? This month’s theme is sweet love and I am supposed to create something sweet to fit the theme. I have been thinking a lot about what to make, something sweet, luxurious, and that also fits My Korean Kitchen’s theme, and this strawberry chapssalddeok is what I came up with. Rice cake is Michael’s favourite Korean snack and is also a very frequently requested recipe by my readers.

Ingredients

-Dough for 3-4 strawberry rice cakes

• Glutinous rice flour (찹쌀가루, Chapssalgaru) – 1 cup
• Water – 2/3 cup
• Salt – 1/2 tsp
• White sugar – 8 tsp

-Red bean paste for 25-30 rice cakes

• Red beans (팥, pat) – 250 g
• Water – 6 cups
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Honey – 50 ml
• White sugar – 2 tsp (You might want to add more sugar if you want a fairly sweet taste. Mine wasn’t as sweet as the ones from a shop)
• Water – 1 cup

-Strawberries (rinsed, stem off, and dried) – same as the number of rice cakes you are going to make.

-Some starch powder (anti sticky purpose, I used it a lot. I only had potato starch, but a rice starch may be better).

Steps (for red bean paste)

1. Rinse the red beans. Put the red beans in a pot and add the water (6 cups).
2. Simmer it until they turn out to be easily crushable. (I boiled it for 40 minutes and the paste turned out to be a bit rough still. So if you want to make really fine red bean paste you need to boil it a lot longer with more water. )
3. Take out the beans, leave them to cool down for 5 minutes and put them into a mixer.
4. Blend them.
5. Add the water (1 cup), honey, white sugar, and salt. Blend it again.
6. Put the blended red bean paste into a pot or wok and dry it on medium to low heat until the moisture evaporates enough so it is a paste.

Steps (for dough, you will need a microwave)

1. Sieve the glutinous rice flour, salt and sugar two times.
2. Add the water and mix them well (it will now look like milk).
3. Put it into a microwavable container.
4. Cook it on high for 3 minutes in a microwave. (I don’t know how your microwave works, but that is how I did it. The purpose is to make it doughy)
5. Take out the container and stir it well.
6. Put it back to the microwave and repeat steps 4 and 5 two times more. (So, you use the microwave for a total of 9 minutes.)
7. Let it cool for 5 minutes.
8. Spread well some starch powder on a plate (cover the plate throughly) and pour out the dough from the container. Put the starch powder onto the dough so that it doesn’t stick on your hand.
9. Divide the dough into 3-4 pieces.

Final steps

1. Spread the dough on your hand and add the red bean paste and a strawberry on top.
2. Seal it.
3. Serve it on the plate. (You need to eat it within 2 hours after you make it. Otherwise the dough will go soggy.)

What can I do with left over red bean paste?

You can keep it the in the freezer and make more chapssalddeok later on. You can also add it on top when you make Patbingsu (snow corn) .

You can’t imagine how hard it was for me to make these. It took me 7 hours (including failures) to save 6 successful chapssalddeok. I aimed to make 20-30 of them though. When I started it, I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t. It was very sticky and very hard to make proper dough that doesn’t stick onto my palm. I also had to visit my mom to borrow her microwave too. I was going to make it the traditional way (without a microwave) but it failed. So I learnt again how hard it can be to express my love to you. Of course the recipe I’m showing you here is the final version that actually works (though it could be better). It took me about 2 hours for the final version but that includes a lot of extra red bean paste.

Related Posts

Sticky Rice Cakes (Chapssalddeok in Korean)

Glutinous Black Rice Cakes

Related posts:

1. Sticky Rice Cakes (Chapssalddeok in Korean)
2. Glutinous Black Rice Cakes
3. Sweet Rice Cake (Gyongdan in Korean)

This is a picture of Chapssalddeok. (About 2000 won – US $2.10 ; You can buy them at the big supermarkets like Homeplus, E-mart, Hanaro mart, etc or rice cake shops in Korea)

I forgot to take a picture of its inside part because I was so busy eating them.
Its inside looks the same as sweet rice cakes (Gyongdan). This is also a common present for grade 12 students in Korea, because we have the SAT equivalent test in Korea, and Chapssalddeok has a sticky character so people wish them to stick with (get in) some kind of good university by giving the present.

Related Posts

Strawberry Rice Cakes for My Valentine

Sweet Rice Cake (Gyongdan in Korean)

Colorful Rice Cake (Mujigae Ddeok in Korean)

What Rice Cake, for Cooking, Looks Like

Fried Honey Cake (Yakgwa in Korean)

Related posts:

1. Glutinous Black Rice Cakes
2. Colorful Rice Cake (Mujigae Ddeok in Korean)
3. Sweet Rice Cake (Gyongdan in Korean)