Christmas Rice Cake

Merry Christmas!

Today, I present my Christmas rice cake to you.  Although I started with a grand vision of creating a whole Santa’s village, after a tree and Santa, I came to senses and accepted the lack of my skill, patience, time and space (on the cake to place a whole village).  Still, in keeping with the spirit of this blog, it is made with natural ingredients and coloring – green from green tea powder, red from a grated beet, yellow from a grated carrot and white from..well, just plain white rice flour mix.  The base cake is pecan seolgi (설기; steamed cake made with short-grain rice powder) covered with sweet potato puree.  All around the base cake are mini rice cake morsels usually reserved for patbingsu (팥빙수; shaved ice with red beans) and finely chopped pecans.  Santa’s eyes are black sesame seeds, and his beard is slightly melted marshmallow.  Of course, as it is typical for rice cakes, no butter was used for the cake, but a good dose of picture editing was used to make it look all warm and soft.

I can’t believe this is my first post in December, possibly the only one, with more items I’m adding on my to-do list every day…including Korean translation of my recent feature article for Yonhap, a couple of recipe requests I’ve promised to post, and other dishes I want to share with you.  Work has been busy, and between caffeine-activated lucidity and caffeine-induced headache, I’m just trying to stay awake these days.  If I feel exceptionally dilligent, I may still post a dish or two before the year’s over, but you may know me better.  Although I’m still trying to figure out my own purpose of tweeting, occasional short and sweet tweets will take over until the regular programming resumes in 2012.

With that, I wish you the happiest, merriest end of 2011.
Happy Holidays, wherever you are, whatever you’re celebrating.

RELATED POSTS
Patbingsu Cupcakes (팥빙수 컵케이크), October 2011
Orange Seolgi (설기), March 2011
Dancing Ghosts and Sleepy Pumpkin Rice Cakes, October 2010
Broccoli Christmas Tree, December 2009

KOREAN WORDS
carrot        당근  (dang geun)
green tea   녹차  (nok cha)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: You can follow Shin on Twitter at @shinsineny)