Korean Sweet Delicacy: Injeolmi (인절미)

This has been quite long day offs and i can't really figure out what to do when i'm bored. Thinking of challenging my cooking skills before entering my freshmen year in hospitality management (at least you know how to cook instant noodle), with the recipe from maangchi.com i cooked Korean dessert, Injeolmi (인절미).

Injeolmi basically are sweet and chewy cake made by sweet rice flour. I planned to make Gyungdan (경단), but sadly i don't have time to buy red beans for the filling, so i made the plain one and it's called Injeolmi. The difference are Gyungdan has red beans filling and covered with roasted sesame powder and Injeolmi is the plain one and covered with roasted soy bean powder. But the taste is actually delicious and it has a really nice texture. They both belongs to ddeok-떡 (Rice cake) family.

Here's the recipe of Injeolmi! (Cr: maangchi.com)

Ingredients:
1 cup Sweet rice flour (I personally use glutinous rice flour)
1/4 ts salt
1 tbs sugar
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup roasted soy bean powder (I subtitute it with almond powder and it works)

How to make:

1. Place sweet rice flour, salt, sugar, and water in a microwavable bowl. Mix it well to make rice cake dough.
2. Cover it with Saran wrap, and cook it in a microwave oven for 3 minutes.
3. Mix the hot dough with a wooden spoon for about 20 seconds. Put the Saran wrap back on and cook 1 more minute in the microwave.
4. Transfer the rice cake dough into a mortar and pound it for about 1 minute (pound 50 times). You’ll make bubbles and then hear the bubbles popping out while you pound, which mean the consistency of the rice cake is just right: chewy and elastic.
   *tip: Put a little cold water on your hands when you want to touch the dough so that it won’t stick to your fingers and will keep you from burning yourself.
5. Spread roasted soybean powder on a cutting board and place your pounded rice cake in the powder. Roll it around a bit to cover it with a light dusting of powder.
6. Cut into bite size pieces.
7. Coat each piece of the rice cake with the roasted soy bean powder and transfer to a serving plate.
8. Sprinkle with sugar when you serve. (I add some sesame and cinnamon powder too)

Tadaaaa!

Mine actually was kinda fail. But i let my little brother taste and he says that it's good (He always said that). It took a long time to make the cake finally steam since i don't have microwave and only use steamer. But i'm happy because we didn't end having stomach-ache after eating this. LOL. Next time, i'm planning to cook gyungdan and hope it works well.

Try it yourself and have fun cooking!!

Pauline ;)