Fun making hotteok, a Korean pancake 호떡

One of my favorite winter snack last year was hotteok, 호떡. It is a type of Korean pancake in which you put a sweet mixture of anything you like.

Although December in Australia was not cold at all but my sister and I often had hotteok anyways since it’s a delish snack, easy to make. For the dough, we mixed flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast and let it rise for half an hour. Since Australian weather in December is warm half an hour is enough for the dough to rise but if you are trying to make hotteok in winter you may need to let the dough rise more than half an hour.

For the filling, you can put literally anything you like. We like nuts and sugar so we put chopped peanuts, cinnamon, sugar, pine nuts, black sesame seeds, chopped walnut and almonds. After you put this filling in the sticky dough the rest is easy. You heat up a pan and put adequate amount of oil. Then you toss a filled dough and press it flat.

The key to make a good hotteok is that you fry them with enough time to melt the sugar inside. The reason why I love hotteok is that is a sweet pancake that has crispy crust. Melted sugar oozes out of the bready part in your mouth… yum yum one can’t ask for more. Not only it tastes great, but making hotteok is a lot of fun. With sticky dough and attempt to put filling inside you can’t stop giggling :)