Celebrating the Fall Pt. 2

Picking apples and pumpkins are great, but those who have spent even one winter in South Korea can’t help but miss the easy accessibility of street vendor food like odeng and thuk bok gi.  Even now, my mouth waters at the thought of sipping from a steaming bowl of fish cake soup and biting into chewy hot sauce-covered rice cakes.  O gawd, and let’s not forget  geem mari dipped in that sauce.  O gawd, I think I’m gonna food-gasm, ew, gross, make me stop.
*ahem

Two weeks ago, le Tokster shared a few pictures of just one of the many things she knows how to cook, the ho thuk.  It’s also known as the Korean hotcake.  Think of it as chewy fried dough with cinnamon-sugar filling – like a soft inside-out elephant ear.  It’s more of a winter snack, like the baked sweet potato and baked chestnuts, but my cravings were kick-started way early by the evil influence that is le Tokster.

I lamented in the fact that I couldn’t lure le Tokster to my lair and force her to cook the ho thuk for me, so I had to find a way to make the damn things myself.  Unfortunately, I had lost the recipe that le Tokster linked me so I had to google “hoddeuk” even though I hate the way Korean words are spelled out in English.  How the hell does h-o-d-d-e-u-k sound like “ho thuk”?  Screw that, I’m rewriting this whole Konglish because I’m awesome.

Uh, so, yea.  I found this super easy recipe here and did my best to follow it to the letter.  

Unfortunately, my very first batch, of six, came out rather tasteless because I was too sparing with the filling.  I was scared that they might burst when pressed, but I now see that this is not a problem.  To make up for the lack of taste, I served it dipped in boysenberry syrup.  Tip for you Korean girls serving this to your non-Korean boyfriends for the first time: Don’t follow my lead with the boysenberry syrup.  It tastes AMAZING but, afterward, even when you get in ample amounts of filling, your man will continue trying to dip it in boysenberry syrup… omgawrrd -_- 

I multiplied the serving to about 24 for my next batch.  The boyfriend took the following photos of my progress.

Wrote out the measurements on my journal.  I’ll show you a picture of this journal sometime.  My friend B made this for me by hand and it’s just so gorgeous, I’m always scared to write in it.

Yeast-y dough  OMG I larve the smell of yeast.

Here’s where I had to stray from the original recipe.  I was all out of brown sugar b/c it had become a bank vault for the local ant community.  I used a smaller measurement of white sugar and added peanut butter.  I also didn’t want to make the boyfriend shell out six bucks for a pack of crushed walnuts, so I used rolled oats that I had at home.  OMG it’s SO GOOD with OATS @_@ O.M.GARRRRRD   And the peanut butter?  Surprisingly well-suited for this food.

I have to be honest.  THE PICTURES MAKE IT LOOK EVEN BETTER THAN IN REAL LIFE.  WHATDERFUGGG.

There’s no need to finish the whole batch at once.  I made about six at a time, letting the dough continue to rise in between.  I finished the whole batch in a span of two days and shared the 24+ pieces with family members.  They were deeply touched to bite into sweet sticky nostalgia after years of being away from Korea.

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