Songpyeon is a Korean traditional rice cake to eat on Chuseok, which is celebration of the year’s good harvest. Traditionally it’s made with the rice of the first harvest of the year. Chuseok is August 15 by the lunar calendar, which is usually in the middle of September by the solar calendar. This year it’s September 14th.
Ingredients:
Frozen rice flour, salt, water, sesame seeds, sesame oil, dried and skinned mung beans, brown sugar, white sugar, pine needles, mugwort powder (ssook garu in Korean), strawberry Jell-o powder.
Make the dough:
- Prepare a package of rice powder (2 lbs) usually sold frozen at a Korean grocery store. Just before using it, you must thaw it until the powder is at room temperature.
- Put rice powder through a sifter to make the powder fine.Tip: If your rice powder is very fine, you can skip sifting. If your rice powder is coarse, you may have to grind it with a food processor or coffee grinder before sifting.
- Prepare 3 stainless bowls and put 1 cup of finely sifted rice powder into the each bowl. (Bowl A, B, and C)
- Boil 2 cups of water for your rice dough.
- Bowl A (white songpyeon): add a pinch of salt and 3 tbs of boiling water and mix it with a wooden spoon. (it’ll be too hot if you use your hands at first) Knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.
- Bowl B (pink songpyeon): add a pinch of salt, a pinch of strawberry Jell-o powder, and 3 tbs of boiling water. Mix it with a wooden spoon and knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.
- Bowl C (green songpyeon): add a pinch of salt, 1 ts of ssookgaru (mugwort power) and 3.5 tbs boiling water. Mix it with a wooden spoon and knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.Tip: You will need to add 3.5 tbs of water because of the 1 ts of ssookgaru.
Make the filling:
Roasted sesame seeds powder filling:
- Grind ¼ cup of roasted sesame seeds using a coffee grinder for 15-20 seconds.
- Transfer the ground sesame powder into a small bowl and mix it with ¼ cup of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.Tip: if you grind too long, the powder will become sticky from the oil in the seeds.
Mung bean powder filling:
- Wash and drain ¼ cup of dried and skinned mung beans and put them in a pot with a thick bottom.
- Add ¼ cup of water and a pinch of salt to the pot and simmer it for 30 minutes.Tip: Be sure not to burn it – simmer over the lowest heat.
- Open the pot and use your wooden spoon to crush the beans into fine powder.Tip: if you make more than ¼ cup of mung bean powder, you may have to use your grinder or food processor to grind it finely.
- Transfer the crushed mung bean powder into a small bowl or container and wait until it cools down.
- Add ¼ cup of white sugar and mix it. That’s it!
Let’s make songpyeon now!
- Break off a piece of rice dough about 1 inch in diameter and roll it between your palms to make a rice ball. Then press your thumb in the center of the ball to make it shaped like a cup.
- Fill the cup with either sesame filling or mung bean filling using a small spoon, and seal it using your thumb and index fingers.
- Place all the raw rice cakes (songpyeon) on a plate.
- Wash your pine needles thoroughly with a little dish soap. Towel dry them.
- Put some water (4 cups) into a steamer and boil it. When it starts boiling, place a damp cotton cloth on the bottom of the steamer tray.
- Make a bed of pine needles on the wet cloth and put the raw songpyeon on top. Put more pine needles on top of the songpyeon, too.Tip: Pine needles stop the songpyeon from sticking together and give them a good flavor.
- Steam it for 25 minutes over medium high heat.
- Prepare some cold water in a large bowl, and drop in a little sesame oil.
- Dump your steamed songpyeon into to the cold water and quickly remove pine needles. Take them out, put them on a plate to serve.
Enjoy your songpyeon and happy Chuseok!
Hi Maangchi,
Thank you for sharing the recipes with us.
In your kimchi’s recipe, the ingredient of sweet rice flour is glutinous rice flour, right? Then how about the rice flour in the recipes of Rainbow Rice Cake and Rice Cake (songpyeon)? Is the must to use Frozen Rice Flour? Is not easy to get these ingredients in Singapore, can I use those normal Rice Flour? Noted from Wan’s comments, she used the glutinous rice flour to make the songpyeon and turn out successful, wanted to know are the other ingredients’ meaurement unchanged? Thank you.
My answers:
1, yes, glutinous rice flour is sweet rice flour called chapssal in Korean. http://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/sweet-rice-flour
2. For rainbow rice cake, you have to use rice flour made with short-grain rice which is soaked overnight and ground finely. Normal rice flour (dried)won’t be cooked properly even though you steam it for hours and hours.
The reason I use frozen rice flour sold at a Korean grocery store is that it is pre-soaked and ground. The rice flour is wet, so it has to be kept in the freezer. Otherwise it will go bad easily.
So if you want, make your own wet rice flour!
Hi Maangchi..
I will be experimenting with the process of making the songpyun. This will be my first attempt and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM already made! I do, however, have one question. I went to the Korean store and bought the frozen rice flour. It comes in Sweetened and UNsweetened. I didn’t know which to buy. What do you suggest? *btw, I picked up ONE bag of each because I want to make these sooooo bad!
Thank you
I use unsweetened frozen rice flour.
Hey! I made this with all different colors of jello and i made a songpyeon cake for my sisters birthday! It was so cute! And i also found out (by accident) that if you put some of the jello powder into the filling it adds a nice fruity taste! Im 100% south korean so these recipes bring back happy memories. Thank you so much Maangchi!
~ Justine
Justine,
You are so smart! Using jello powder is a brilliant idea. Cheers!
I bought rice flour to try these out, but it wasn’t korean, I believe it was made in thailand. I assumed that It’d be the same since it was the only rice flour I could find at the grocery store. When I added the three tablespoons of water it remained crumbly. So I added some more water. Eventually it did ball up, but it wouldn’t stretch very well, it seemed to break apart very easily. I’m guessing I got the wrong kind of rice flour.
I was also wondering about how long did you have to kneed the rice flour and water before it turned into dough?
Heeyoun, you must have been frustrated when you tried to make this rice cake! But all answers to your questions are in the recipe right on this page!
You have to get rice flour made with short grain rice and sold in the freezer section because it’s a little wet.
Ah I went to my Korean grocery shop last week in C.London, and I bought this platter of different ddeok! It was delicious and they had these cute songpyeon which were slightly bigger than marbles and they were coloured pink, yellow and green on one side and white on the other!^^
Now I have some idea of the texture when I try to make it ^^
HI Maangchi,
thank you for all the hard work you have put in so that we can have korean food. I made the songpyeon using glutinous rice flour (the only short grain rice flour I can find here) and it turned out great. We were eating it as fast as we could make it. My mother-in-law loved it too. After cooling it didn’t turn hard either! thanks again!
oh, yeah? Glutinous rice flour works for this recipe? hmm, thank you for letting me know about it.
Hi there! I just want to ask is this the same as Manna Tteokjib? I would like to make it but I can’t find a recipe. Can you help me? Thanks ^^
Foods from Korea , Japan and Vietnam are so much better than food over here (north America) T.T. Is there a Korean version of Vietnamese Pho that you know Maangchi?I would love to learn how to cook it.
So, the cotton cloth you use to steam the rice cake, can I just use a clean kitchen towel?
What a great video. I appreciate the time you two took to make and post this video. I plan on making songpyun this weekend! Thanks!
hi im mira from athens greece, im glad that i found your site, i enjoying your cooking demo, and trying to cook every recipe that you making. anyway more power to your cooking site,. if you dont mind send me of your recipe in my email (myramanifor_2007@yahoo.com),thank you…
You are from Athens, Greece! I’m very happy to be found by you! : ) Welcome to my website.
i made them, but they turned out tough ;__; i don’t know why. Is it because i steamed them in a rice cooker?
Maybe the dough was too hard? I don’t know the answer.
I made another batch that turned out better! =D I had been letting them steam for too long. Probably because my rice cooker’s steamer is smaller than the one you used. I tried it for 15 minutes instead of 25 and they turned out perfect! Well perfect as far as texture goes, haha. I’ve never had them before so i don’t know how they should taste. thanks so much for sharing the recipe! ^ㅂ^
oh, you solved the problem by yourself! Practice makes perfect! : ) Thank you for your update!