Hello, welcome everyone! I am so happy to have you all here on my blog. I have a huge passion for rice cake, and to be exact, sweet rice cake varieties that I can eat for dessert. There are sweet rice cakes and some savory rice cakes, so my husband and my family-in-law love all kinds of rice cakes, including savory ones like the Korean rice cake soup Tteokguk. We live in Norway, where we can’t get access to all the wonderful Korean rice cakes we used to eat, though, so I got into making lots of rice cakes. Today, I’m going to share a very quick and delicious sweet rice cake recipe that is naturally sweet and vegan. So let’s get started.
About Sweet Rice Cake
Introduction to Sweet Rice Cake
Sweet rice cake is all kinds of rice cake that is sweet and therefore eaten as dessert. There are so many different kinds of rice cake, and therefore, sweet rice cake, in the world.
Rice cakes are delightful culinary treats that are in many different kinds and forms in Asia. Even within Korea, there are so many different kinds of rice cakes and rice cake recipes, and surprisingly more recipes popping up with modern ingredients or methods. When I lived in Japan, there were so many different types of mochi, which is translated as rice cakes in English, but mochi includes so many more types of cakes that are not exactly made out of rice, such as warabi mochi, which is made out of fern starch.
Korean Sweet Rice Cake Types
Growing up in Korea, I used to eat so many different kinds of rice cakes. I can’t give you a whole list of every rice cake in Korea but I got the most popular sweet rice cake types for you to learn more about them.
1. Songpyeon
In this blog post, I wrote about the iconic sweet rice cake for the Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok. Songpyeon is a delicious half-moon-shaped rice cake with sweet sesame seed fillings inside. Traditionally, it was steamed on pine leaves to have a fresh pine scent on rice cakes. You can also shape them into flowers, leaves, or even a pumpkin once you get the hang of making songpyeon!
2. Jeolpyeon
Jeolpyeon is a form of rice cake that is usually stretched out and cut into various shapes or pressed with traditional rice cake stamps with patterns such as flowers, words, and cartwheels. This type of rice cake is usually brushed with sesame oil as a final touch to give it a nutty taste. You can put mugwort in the rice cake to make it mugwort jeolpyeon and it can have some sweet red bean paste inside. It is usually dipped in honey or simply sesame oil. You can eat this rice cake in a savory style by dipping it in soy sauce.
3. Injeolmi
Injeolmi is considered one of the easiest sweet rice cakes to make; it is a steamed glutinous rice cake usually covered with toasted bean powder, but there is injeolmi covered in toasted and crushed black sesame seeds. Whichever toppings you use for injeolmi, it gives a very sweet and nutty flavor. It’s nutty, sweet, and chewy—such a great Korean dessert!
4. Chapssal-tteok
This is my grandpa’s and my favorite type of sweet rice cake. It is made with glutinous rice cake with sweet azuki bean paste filling and covered with white starch. It looks like a little bunny’s tail! You can have chapssal-tteok with some other ingredients, such as mugwort or mulberry for color and flavor, as I introduced in my article about mugwort rice cakes.
5. Fusion or Modern
Now there are so many fusion or modern rice cakes developed in the world! I am very happy to see that because it is loved by young generations and foreigners instead of a dying traditional Korean dish. Sweet rice cakes have been created in a fusion or a modern way a lot recently due to Korean traditional dessert cafes opening up. They make waffles with rice cake, rice cakes with ice cream, rice cakes with cream fillings, chocolate rice cakes, you name it! I would love to share those with you here as well.
So there are numerous recipes to be published on this blog, which I am very excited to share with you. Today, as the first sweet rice cake recipe (and it is my very first rice cake recipe too!) I would like to introduce you to a sweet potato rice cake. It is not exactly a traditional recipe because we don’t have this sweet potato in Korea, nor do we traditionally use date paste as a sweetener. But this method of combining sticky rice flour with other ingredients to give colors and flavor has been used widely throughout the history of rice cake making so I would call this a Korean fusion rice cake. 😊
The Special Sweet Rice Cake
So what is special about this sweet potato rice cake recipe?
1. Natural Sweetener & No Added Sugar
Instead of using sugar as a sweetener in the sweet rice cake, I used date paste, which has much more nutrition and fiber. Date paste also has a chewy texture that is the texture we want in a rice cake, so it works! Usually, there is an incredibly high amount of sugar added to desserts including rice cake. As much as I love rice cakes, I am concerned about my family’s health when they eat what I cook.
2. Extremely Easy to Follow
This rice cake recipe is incredibly easy to follow. Fresh rice cake that they sell in rice cake shops in Korea is something that all my Korean fellows miss. My husband and my mother-in-law are rice cake killers so I had to come up with an easy rice cake recipe to make for them often. After a few trials, this quick, delicious, and nutritious recipe was born.
Sweet Potato Types for Sweet Potato Rice Cake
In this recipe, I use orange sweet potatoes that I can find in Scandinavian supermarkets, including a Norwegian one. The orange sweet potato is more moist and has a very deep orange color when cooked than the yellow sweet potatoes that I can find in East Asia. You can use Pumpkin Sweet Potato (호박 고구마) for this recipe. Because it is moist, vibrantly colored, and has sweetness, it is perfect for mixing with rice flour, as the plain rice flour becomes a neutral canvas to support the beautiful sweet potato’s characteristics.
Now without further ado, let’s get into the cooking!
Sweet Potato Rice Cake Recipe | Sweet Rice cake
Sweet Potato Rice Cake
Ingredients
Method
- Peal the sweet potato and steam it for 20 minutes.
- While the sweet potato is hot, put it in a bigger bowl. Pour the rice flour, salt, and date paste into the bowl and mix all the ingredients. Leave it for 30 minutes.
- After the mixture is well incorporated, take the dough into small pieces and make a little ball. You can make it into any shape you like. I like to make it into a little ball or squash it lightly to make it into a short and wide cylinder shape. I made mine 6cm in diameter and 1.5cm tall.
- Steam the shaped dough for 20 minutes until they are well-cooked. They will get darker and bigger in size.
- Let it cool down for 30 minutes. Serve it with date syrup or sweetener of your choice.
Notes
- Instead of steaming the sweet potato, you can microwave it for 10 minutes with a lid on.
- To cook the finished dough, you can heat a pan and bake it with or without oil for 10 minutes on each side instead of steaming.
Summary of Sweet Potato Rice Cake
One day I felt like making some rice cake, so I just whipped this up and brought it to my husband. He asked me where I bought it. I told him I just made it for fun, and he was so surprised that it was homemade! He loved it so much that he wanted to have it again the next day. So here I am writing down this recipe so I remember to make it again for him for dessert after dinner today.
If you loved making this recipe, check out my other rice cake recipes here.
My Other Rice Cake Recipes
Pumpkin Butter Mochi | Easy Hawaiian Kabocha Dessert Recipe
Try this pumpkin butter mochi recipe! Pumpkin butter mochi is rich and buttery, like cake with a chewy texture of mochi and sweet, deep flavors of pumpkin.
My Other Sweet Potato Recipes
Sweet Potato Latte | Cozy and Sweet Korean Goguma Latte Recipe
This popular Korean sweet potato latte, aka goguma latte, is so sweet, soft, and creamy! Make this sweet potato latte at home to warm your body and soul. 🤤🍠
Japanese Mashed Sweet Potato Recipe | Perfect Side Dish for Fall
This original Japanese mashed sweet potato recipe is soft, comforting, and sweet. It’s a perfect side dish for fall and winter! Learn how to make it easily.
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