Korean Sweet Pancake – Hotteok/Hodduck (호떡)
At the corner of every neighborhood in Seoul, especially in the winter when your nose and fingers are so cold, they feel numb…. you will always find a cart on the street that sells this piping hot Korean sweet dessert pancake called Hotteok/Hodduk (호떡). If Korean ice bingsoo is a must have cool-down food in hot summers in Korea, this warm and syrupy hotteok is a must have food for the freezing cold winters. The moment you bite into this pancake, the hot cinammony syrup will ooze into your mouth. Chewy dough with the fried crispness on the outside and the sweet sugar syrup with bits of nuttiness makes it one of my favorite Korean snack/dessert since childhood days.
My husband also LOVES hotteok. He will eat it hot or cold, for breakfast, as a snack, as a dessert and maybe even as lunch- if I let him. 🙂 He ate 3 hotteoks in one sitting as dessert just now and was mumbling to himself that his breakfast menu for tomorrow is now decided. It will be.. hotteok!! 😉
As much as I love hotteok, in recent years it has been hard for me to eat them often because I always had indigestion problems. I don’t have celiac disease but still gluten bothers me a lot of times. Certain types of gluten foods eaten a certain way (e.g. plain hard roll on an empty stomach) will create problms for me and definitely give me indigestion, gas and even diarrhea afterwards. Sorry, not the best topic for food blog but I have to be real~ 😉
Towards the end of my stay in Korea, I discovered a sweet flour hotteok mix from hansalim (한살림) which was much better for my digestion. There are popular big brands that claim it’s a sweet rice flour hotteok recipe but it actually only has about 3-4% sweet rice flour which is basically nothing. The hansalim hotteok mix that I like has more than 40% sweet rice flour and we actually like the dough better. It comes out more crunchy on the outside. So after several tries, I created this recipe that tastes just as good and also is just as easy on my stomach.
Mint Hotteok/Hodduck (Korean Sweet Pancake)
Before we get to the recipe, a short history lesson on Hotteok. The hotteok pancake has been around since the late 1920’s in Korea, originally made and sold by Chinese refugees who arrived on boats into Incheon. There are similar yeast dough pancakes in Chinese cuisine which are savory using ingredients like chives. But somehow this sweet variation with sugar filling gained the most popularity in Korea and have stuck around for almost 100 years. These days, there are hotteok with with pumpkin and sunflower seeds called ssiatt hotteok/hodduck (seed hotteok) and even some with cheese in them.
** Check out my Mint and Basil Hotteok post for my modern take on hotteok with various herbs! It’s so pretty and tasty!
Hotteok – Korean sweet dessert pancake
Makes: 10 4″ pancakes Cooking Time: Inactive (3 hrs + 10 min) + 20 min Difficulty: Medium
- 1 cup (130g/4.5oz) all purpose flour
- 1 cup (130g/4.5oz) sweet rice flour
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp instant dry yeast
- 3/4 cup (177 ml/ 6 oz) water + optionally 2~3 T more
- 1 tsp sugar
- vegetable oil for frying (at least 6 Tbs or more)
For stuffing
- 1/2 cup unbleached sugar (brown sugar is also good)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
- Add 1 tsp sugar to 3/4 cup warm/hot water, stir to dissolve. Water should be around 120~130 °F (48~54°C) which is a bit hotter than hot bath temperature. Add 1 tsp dry yeast to sugar water. Let stand for 10 min. (This is to proof yeast). Make sure you keep the yeast water in a warm place so it doesn’t cool down too much. Since it’s instant dry yeast, you can just use it as part of the dry ingredients but I found that it works much better if you mix it with warm water first.
- Measure and mix all dry ingredients (flours and salt).
- When the little yeast guys have all come alive and are bubbly, mix 1 and 2.
proof yeast by adding yeast to sugar water
- Mix yeast sugar water with the flour mix. Dough should be fully wet and sticky. Wetter than pasta dough. Depending on how dry your flour and/or weather is, you may need to add more water. It doesn’t have to be exact so it’s OK if you end up making it too wet. Error on the side of the dough being too wet than dry.
- Let dough sit for 3 hrs in room temperature or keep in the oven with light turned on if your room is too cold (below 20°C/68°F). Dough should double in size when ready.
- Prepare sugar stuffing by mixing sugar, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. Chop walnuts finely.
Cinnamon sugar filling for hotteok (Korean sweet dessert pancake)
If the nuts are too coarse, it can create holes in the hotteok dough as you press it down during cooking. Peanuts are cheaper than walnut so that’s what most street vendors use in Korea. If you like peanuts or any other nuts better, go head and use that.
- When dough is ready, heat about 3 Tbs or more of oil in a pan over medium heat.
- Pour about 1 tsp of oil in your hand and rub both your hands so they become nice and slippery. Take about a golf size worth of dough in your hand and spread out with your hands until it’s a little bigger than your palm. Add 1-2 tsp of the sugar mix into the center of the dough and close up the hotteok – making it into a little round parcel.
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- 1. spreading dough for hotteok
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- 2. filling hotteok with sugar
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- 3. wrapping dough for hotteok
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- 4.closing up dough for hotteok
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- Add hotteok parcel into the pan by flipping the hand to drop the pancake onto the pan, with the smooth side (side that was stuck to your palm) facing upwards. Oil a wide spatula by dunking it in the pan. Press the hotteok and slowly flatten it until the diameter becomes about 4 in/10cm wide. If you press it too much, you will end up with a hole and the sugar content will leak and get messy. It’s OK if that happens, no biggie.
dropping hotteok into oiled pan
- Fry the pancake in oil for 3-4 min until edges start to brown. Lower heat if it starts to brown faster than that. You don’t want the heat to be too high because you want sugar to melt inside to become all nice and syrupy.
Hotteok (Korean Sweet pancake) frying in oil
- Serve warm with some nice green tea or cold milk for kids!
Korean Sweet Dessert Pancake – Hotteok/Hodduk (호떡) with cinnamon sugar syrup filling insde
BE CAREFUL when eating hotteok hot because the filling can be really hot and you may even burn yourself so let it cool for couple minutes before you eat it.
Leftovers
Leftovers can be kept at room temperature for 1-2 days. Refrigerate to store longer. Taste best when reheated in a pan or in microwave.
Hotteok Variations
- Make a more chewy hotteok by using 2 cups all purpose flour instead.
- Make a healthier hotteok by using whole wheat flour instead. Dough comes out less glutinous so knead it in your hand before making the hotteok to increase the gluten.
- Make a more modern, fusion hotteok by adding fresh herbs to them. Stay tuned for my next post to see how that’s done!
- Use different kinds of nuts or seeds for the filling.
- 1 cup (130g/4.5oz) all purpose flour
- 1 cup (130g/4.5oz) sweet rice flour
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp instant dry yeast
- 3/4 cup (177 ml/ 6 oz) water + optionally 2~3 T more
- 1 tsp sugar
- vegetable oil for frying (at least 6 Tbs or more)
- 1/2 cup unbleached sugar (brown sugar is also good)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
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Add 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp dry yeast to 3/4 cup warm (120~130 °F (48~54°C)) to hot water.
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Measure and mix all dry ingredients (flours and salt).
-
When yeast is bubbly, mix 1 and 2.
-
Mix yeast sugar water with the flour mix. Dough should be fully wet and sticky.
-
Let dough sit for 3 hrs in room temperature. Dough should double in size when ready.
-
Prepare stuffing - mix sugar, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. Chop walnuts finely.
-
When dough is ready, heat about 3 Tbs or more of oil in a pan over medium heat.
-
Pour about 1 tsp of oil in your hand and rub both your hands so they become nice and slippery. Take about a golf size of dough in your hand and spread out with your hands until it’s a little bigger than your palm. Add 1-2 tsp of the sugar mix into the center of the dough and close up the hotteok – making it into a little round parcel.
-
Add hotteok parcel into the pan by flipping the hand to drop the pancake onto the pan, with the smooth side (side that was stuck to your palm) facing upwards.
-
Oil a wide spatula and press hotteok and slowly flatten it until the diameter becomes about 4 in/10cm wide. If you press it too much, you will end up with a hole and the sugar content will leak and get messy.
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Fry pancake in oil med heat for 3-4 min until edges start to brown. Lower heat if it starts to brown faster than that. You don’t want the heat to be too high because you want sugar to melt inside before the outside gets too dark.
BE CAREFUL when eating hotteok - because the filling can be extremely hot and you can easily burn your mouth! So let it cool for couple minutes before you eat it.
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