I’m going to introduce a beautiful Korean rice cake today. It’s called mujigae-tteok (무지개떡). Mujigae means rainbow, so my ancestors must have got the idea for the name from a rainbow! I love it! This is an example of how they incorporated natural beauty into their everyday life. Even though the name of the rice cake is “rainbow rice cake,” it is usually made with only 3-5 different colored layers. That’s why this rice cake is sometimes called “colorful rice cake” (색떡, saektteok).
In this recipe, I am using 5 different colors from bottom to top: brown, green, yellow, pink, and white.
This rice cake is made on special occasions like a baby’s 1 year old birthday, or a wedding. As you see in this video, making this rice cake takes a lot of effort and time, even though the ingredients are comparatively simple. However, if you make this rice cake for someone very special in your life, you wouldn’t care much about time and effort. : ) You may wish this while you’re rubbing the rice flour with your palms:
“I wish my baby becomes healthy, smart, and a good, warm-hearted person!”
“I wish my parents have healthy and long life!”
“To show my love for my lovely husband (or wife) !”
Leave a comment and let me know what you wish when you make this!
A note about short grain rice flour
: the flour you buy at your local store or the flour you make may have more or less moisture in it than the rice flour I use in this recipe. This is because of many different things like how long it’s been in the freezer in the store, or the atmospheric conditions where you live. You may need to steam more or less, depending on how dry or wet your short grain rice flour is.
Cooking time: 1.5 hours
Ingredients
A 2 pound package of frozen rice flour (or make it at home), sugar, kosher salt, water, liquid food coloring (green, pink, and yellow), lemon, mugwort powder (ssukgaru 쑥가루), cocoa powder.
Cooking utensils:
Steamer, sifter, 8 inch (20 cm) ring or springform.
Directions
- Thaw out frozen rice flour package and put it into a large bowl.
- Sift the rice flour.
- Add 10 cups of water in the bottom of a steamer, and place a wet cloth over the rack.
- Place the 8 inch cake ring in the center of the rack.
Brown layer (the bottom layer):
- Place 1 cup of rice flour in a medium sized bowl. Add 1 ts cocoa powder, a pinch of salt, 2 tbs of white sugar, and 4 ts of water.
- Mix it all up and press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms.
- Put the mixture into a sifter and sift into the center of the ring.
- Flatten out the mixture so it sits level in the ring.
*tip: a business card works well
Green layer:
- Place 1½ cup of rice flour in a medium sized bowl. Add a pinch of salt, 2 tbs sugar, and 1 ts mugwort powder (ssukgaru).
*tip: you can replace mugwort powder with green tea powder
- Put 2 tbs of water and 1 drop of green liquid food coloring into a small bowl and mix well.
*tip: Use a chopstick to get a very little amount of the food coloring - Add the green water to the rice cake mixture and mix it all up. Press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms.
- Put the mixture into a sifter and sift into the center of the ring.
- Flatten out the mixture so it sits level in the ring.
Yellow layer:
- Place 1½ cup of rice flour in a medium sized bowl. Add a pinch of salt and 2 tbs sugar.
- Put 1tbs lemon juice, 1 tbs water, and 1 drop of yellow liquid food coloring into a small bowl and mix well.
- Add the yellow water to the rice cake mixture and mix it all up. Press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms.
- Put the mixture into a sifter and sift into the center of the ring.
- Flatten out the mixture so it sits level in the ring.
Pink layer:
- Place 1½ cup of rice flour in a medium sized bowl. Add a pinch of salt and 2 tbs sugar.
- Put 2 tbs water and 1 drop of hot pink (fuchsia) liquid food coloring into a small bowl and mix well.
- Add the pink water to the rice cake mixture and mix it all up. Press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms.
- Put the mixture into a sifter and sift into the center of the ring.
- Flatten out the mixture so it sits level in the ring.
White layer (the top layer):
- Place 1 cup of rice flour in a medium sized bowl. Add a pinch of salt, 2 tbs white sugar, and 4 ts water.
- Mix it up and press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms.
- Put the mixture into a sifter and sift into the center of the ring.
- Flatten out the mixture so it sits level in the ring.
Now let’s garnish!
- On the top of the cake place 5 dried cranberries to make flower petals. Put a few pine nuts in the center.
- Cut a dried apricot into a thin strip, and place it as a flower stem.
Finally, let’s steam it:
- Close the lid of the steamer and bring to a boil for 30 minutes over high heat.
- Turn down the heat and simmer another 5 minutes.
- Take out the rice cake and let it cool down. Serve with tea or coffee.
Maangchi's Amazon picks for this recipe
It's always best to buy Korean items at your local Korean grocery store, but I know that's not always possible so I chose these products on Amazon that are good quality. See more about how these items were chosen.
Hi Maangchi
Many thanks for sharing your love of cooking. What kind of rice flour; is it gluten rice or just rice flour as I cant get frozen rice flour in uk. Can I use this one?
https://groceries.morrisons.com/productImages/233/233545011_0_640x640.jpg?identifier=453d05613a1ffb15fad1a11cf1493657
Thanks Kimmi
I went to a Korean grocery today. They have two kinds of frozen rice – regular rice and sweet rice. I bought the sweet rice. Should I have bought the regular frozen rice? I want to make the steamed rice cake but I’ve noticed the recipe does not specify if it’s using the rice flour made from regular or sweet rice. Thanks.
The recipe calls for frozen short grain rice flour, not sweet rice flour. Any time you are not sure what to get, click the link of the ingredient in one of my recipes and you’ll get all the details of exactly what you need. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredient/frozen-rice-flour
So I made this today. It did not turn out the way I expected. I already used 1/2 the sugar called for in the recipe because I was using sweet rice and it was still far too sweet. The consistency was very sticky as well, not at all like the rice cake I had bought in store. Even though I had steamed it for 3 minutes it had an odd uncooked consistency to it. Not sure how to explain it any better. I made it 3 layers – matcha green tea, plain white, and a brown layer using Japanese black sugar. The flavors were good, albeit toooooo sweet. Live and learn.
Now that I have approximately 1.75kg of the sweet rice flour sitting in my freezer, what else can I make with it?
That’s supposed to say 30 minutes, not 3 minutes.
Has anyone ever used a pressure cooker/instant pot for this? If so- what’s the cooking time?
The instruction manuals say not to cook rice in a pressure cooker.
Hi Maangchi,
I want to make a rice cake for my Korean daughter in law’s birthday. She loves coconut so I would like to make it coconut flavoured. Can I add shredded coconut to the rice mix? If so how much?
Thank you
Cheriee
I did a small test and it worked. I followed your directions for the white layer and added 1/4 cup shredded dried coconut to 1 cup of rice flour. I couldn’t sift it though because of the coconut. When I make the full cake on Saturday I will sift it into a bowl and then add the coconut and put it in the pan. The coconut flavour was delicious! Thank you so much for your inspiration Maangchi!
Hi Maangchi, I love your recipes. Thanks for posting them. I wanted to know if I can use Mochiko Rice Flower for the Rainbow Rice Cake?
Thanks
No, mochiko flour is made from glutinous rice flour which is much stickier than short grain rice flour. If you make this rice cake with mochiko, it won’t turn out fluffy.
Hi Maangchi! I am interested to make this cake. As this cake has no preservatives, how long can it last out of the fridge (I live in Singapore and it has a very warm and humid climate)? Also, can the uneaten portions be stored in the refrigerator and for how long can it be kept? Will it taste different after it is refrigerated?
Although I am not a professional when it comes to this cake I do know it can be refrigerated once eaten. Also to my knowledge it can be left out for a good period of time due to no dairy but you might prefer it at different temperatures like warm vs cold. As to it tasting different I don’t think it will too much but it might depend more on the flavoring you use. For example I used the liquid from a can of strawberries and that might not stay good forever. But at least in my mind most things about this cake will stay good for awhile.
Hi guys,
It will be ok up to 5 to 6 hours at room temperature but if you like to serve it later, freeze it instead of keep it in the fridge because the rice cake will get hard. Freeze it when it’s still fresh and fluffy, it will still be chewy and fluffy when it’s thawed out. Thaw it out at room temperature before serving, or reheat it in a steamer or microwave oven.
Also to get a less fluffy and more firm/sticky cake would it work to add more water or press firmly down in the pan? I know it sounds unrealistic but i am looking to have the cake more tightly packed! Is there a way to do that?
I figured it out! I wrote directions here: https://www.maangchi.com/talk/topic/rainbow-rice-cake-4-inch-pan#post-66010
Turns out you must lightly push down on the layer to achieve a more tightly packed rice cake. Also the longervyou put it in the more moisture it should have so it depends on what texture you want.
Hello! I am trying to do this recipe in a pan half the size (4 inch spring form)! Would it be okay to do just half all the measurements such as half the rice amount and only 15 minute cooking time for it to come out well? I plan to do some test runs but it would be nice to see if you could recommend a good route to take! :) I hope you can help! Thanks for the free recipe!
Turns out 30 minutes is okay! Here is what I did here: https://www.maangchi.com/talk/topic/rainbow-rice-cake-4-inch-pan#post-66010 It came out very good when I did it and I did 30 minutes! I’m might do it a bit shorter next time due to slight mushyness but it came out very good!!
I am not too crazy about dduk. But once in a while, I eat it. And when I do, rainbow cake is among the ones I eat. The last time I had dduk was a few months ago when my new sister in law’s family gave dduk to my parents as an ebaji sunmool, which the new bride’s family presents to the in laws as a gesture of thanks and humble request to take good care of their daughter and such. http://www.behgopa.com/2015/03/the-meaning-behind-food-items-in-korean.html
Hi Maangchi
Can you please teach me Redbean Sirudeok. I guess I can use this Rainbow rice cake for the riceflour layer. Please advise how do I prepare the redbean layer. Thank you.
I made the rice cake today and I learned a big lesson. Turns out, it takes a long time for the frozen rice flour to thaw. I thought I could just take it out of the freezer a few minutes before, but bad idea. When I added the water it immediately turned to soup. Only after about 5 hours did the rice start to absorb the water. Then I had a huge clump that took another hour to break apart to get through the sifter. The cake turned out snowy and fluffy, but man what a lot of needless labor. If I had paid better attention, Maangchi says she thaws the flour overnight in the fridge. Lesson learned!
I can see all the hard work you put into making a good rice cake! I know you are very good at Korean cooking, so your comment will help & encourage those planning to make it, too. Cheers!
hi maangchi. I tried doing this one using regular rice flour which is not frozen. Of course it was an epic fail. Do you know anyway how i can use the regular rice flour and turn it into the same frozen one? thanks!
One of my readers made mujigaetteok with dried rice flour and posted the photo here. I hope it helps you. https://www.maangchi.com/photo/rainbow-rice-cake#comment-27409
Hello Maangchi,
I think your recipes are awesome and I have always had great results following them. My korean teacher(who taught me everything I know about hangul) is leaving and won’t be back for around 10 years. Is it possible to make a 10 layer cake? What advice would you give me if I try this and what colors would you suggest? Thanks!
“Is it possible to make a 10 layer cake?” I don’t think it will work well because the rice cake won’t steam all the layers thoroughly. Your teacher will come back in 10 years, so you like to make 10 layers of colorful rice cake? I think it’s a very cute idea though. : )
Hello Maangchi~ I always love your recipes.
I am taking cooking in our school and we have a home cooking assignment, and i decided to make this.
I have a question for this, so can I use sweet rice flour instead of frozen rice flour?
I have a lot of sweet rice flour because I made rice cake from your other recipes, however, we don’t have short grain rice flour nor short grain.
To make mujigaeddeok, you need short grain rice flour. It’s not available, then how about making injeolmi or chapssalddeok that calls for sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour)? Good luck with your school project.
Injeolmi: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/injeolmi
Chapssalddeok: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/chapssalddeok
I made green tea chapssalddeok today. It tasted great though it didn’t look very green~
thank you~
❤Odhu
Hi,
I happen to chance on our youtube channel and really loves your videos as I had been searching for Korean receipes.
I would like to try to make this Rainbow Cake as a birthday cake for my mum and would like to check if I can use normal Rice Flour instead of Frozen Rice Flour and must it be Korean Rice Flour?
Thanks. :)
Hi maangchi:::
How many people does this recipe serve? I need to make a cake for 60!
This cake will serve 6-8. “I need to make a cake for 60” omg!
wow, thats a lot of sifting….. >.<
Hi, I hope you wont mind but I copied your recipe to my facebook note so I can share it with my friends :) Have your website link on it too!! I really love this cake!!! and thank you for the instructions on making frozen rice flour too, that helped a lot for me.
Thank you for your interest and for sharing this recipe with your friends!
You make my mouth water! It looks great. Seems to be alot of work! ;)
I really do love how this cake looks. I would love to try making this but I do not have a steamer as big as that. Would I be able to cook this cake in ramekins?
Hi
I am a Korean and planning a wedding – most guests won’t be Koreans. Do you think this can work as a wedding cake? I want to bring some Korean idea into our wedding but I realized that we don’t have a place to order ddeok in my town.
A few concerns are
1. Will it be easy to cut and be served?
2. How long will it be good? I think I need to make this by myself with some help of friends. To make cakes that will be 100-200 small pieces… I may need at least couple days.
Thanks!!
Hey Maangchi, I really want to make this rainbow cake and i even bought rice flour.. the condition where the flour was stored was quite cold but it wasn’t frozen rice flour…
Do you think that would still work??
I don’t know the answer without seeing your rice flour. Check this out please. https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/mepssalgaru
i want to try it .. but i have question can use my own flour ?
Hi Maangchi!!!
first of all i have to say that i absolutely lovvvvvvveee your site!!!and your videos! they’re so fun and cheery!!!and its seems like you’re really putting you heart into it!
so thank you for that=]
and second…i really want to make this cake to my brother’s birthday today and its really important too ,cause we had an awful fight!so that’s my way to apologize=](and also its one of the few recipes i can make…see i eat only kosher food!=] but i’m finding my own ways to try them=])
but i don’t have that big of a steamer like yours…there’s maybe another way to do this awesome cake without a steamer??
“we had an awful fight!so that’s my way to apologize..” cute~ : )
I think you need a steamer to steam the rice cake. You can use a small bamboo steamer, too.
I use the steamer basket that came with my rice cooker to make mujigae ddeok. I steam it right in the rice cooker and it works great. I just cover the bottom of the plastic steamer insert with a paper towel cut in a circle–I do this because it has holes in it. I can’t make the cake quite as tall as I might if I had a better steamer, but it works.
Maangchi.. I bought frozen rice flour from a different korean store today. I’ve made this dduk before but with a rice flour that had no salt. This one has ingredients listed as: Flour, Water, Salt. Will the dduk turn out salty or do you think I can use it? You commented to someone else to use one without salt so I wasn’t sure if it’s worth the time to try it. If this is not the right rice flour, what can I do with it? Also, Do you think I can make this in a steamer that fits on top of a pot? Before I borrow my Emo’s huge steamer like the one in your video, but I was wondering if I could just fill the steamer basket that came with one of my pots. I know that all the holes are covered then so i was just wondering if you’ve ever tried it.
i made this for my korean project but instead of food coloring i used natural ingredients it was really good. i also used eun heng and dae chu for the topping
I don’t have a steamer is there a way to make this without one?
hi!! do you know how to make sweet rice flour??… because where I live flour is more expensive and harder to get than sweet rice itself…. btw, I loved your cake and I’m planning to make it for my mom’s bday :)
Sweet rice is stickier than usual short grain rice. Soak sweet rice flour in cold water overnight and strain. Then grind the rice into a fine powder. If you have a mill in your area, take the soaked sweet rice to them and ask them to grind it. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/sweet-rice
For this rainbow rice cake, you need short grain rice flour. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/frozen-rice-flour
Hi Maangchi ^^
I’m from spain and i’ve tried multiple times mujigae ddeok when I was in South Korea but now i’m back to spain, I really miss it but thanks to your recipe i’m going to start making it for myself when I have some free time. Thank you a lot.
I hope your mujigaeddeok turns out fluffy delicious! Check out my recent rice cake recipe called “baekseolgiddeok”. If you like mujigaeddeok, you will probably like baekseolgiddeok, too! The taste is very similar to mujigaeddeok. Good luck! https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/baekseolgiddeok
can i use sticky rice ?
No, you need to use short grain rice flour:
https://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/frozen-rice-flour
Hi Maangchi, thanks for the recipe :]
I tried making the cake with my mum today. The cake turned out pretty and colorful, but I think there was some problem with the texture as it wasn’t fluffy at all. It turned out sticky, chewy and dry and we couldn’t figure out why it turned out like that. The rice flour my mum got was from the korean store in the frozen section after asking the lady at the counter and used a regular manual sifter.
What might be some reasons for this? Thanks a lot for your help ^^
hmm, I’m suspicious of the rice cake flour you bought. There are 2 types of rice cake flour in the freezer section of Korean grocery stores: rice flour and sweet rice flour.
You need this rice flour: https://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/frozen-rice-flour
If you make this rice cake with sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour), it will never be fluffy.
To make fluffy rice cake, sifting is very important.
Hi there…..
I successfully made this for my bf’s bday today. I uploaded the picture so pls take a lookk. after reading the comments n realize how important sifting is. i spentnt a lot of arm muscle to shake the sifter since mine was broken :-(((((….but it turned out welll…Thank u so much…ur awesome
Yes, I saw the photo. It will be posted very soon. Congratulations!
I like to do this cake but I can’t find the frozen rice flour. Now I’m desperate! Can I try with another flour or will be a mistake?
Thank you very much, Maamgchi.
You need rice flour to make rice cake. You could make your own rice flour to make this rice cake.Soak short grain rice overnight, drain, and grind it finely with a grinder.
You have to use rice flour 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 package of frozen rice flour sold at a Korean grocery store in North America 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.
Hello, Maangchi. Well, I finally got the chance to make the ,mujigae ddeok today and I failed, lol. So now, I have some questions. When I first started to make the cocoa layer, I used 4tsp and that turned out to be way too much water, it actually turned into dough. So I halved everything and that was still too much water. When I would rub the flour together they would form so many clumps, while I was trying to break them up and then when I would try to sift it the flour would get worse and turn into dough. I wasted so much flour because it could not be sifted, therefor my cake only turned out about 1-in to 1.5 in in height. Also the center of the cake was chewy like the chapseolddeok after you microwave it, but the edges were dry and chewy. I can only think that my mistake was taking the flour right out of the refrigerator and using it. I left it in there over night and it defrosted, but was I supposed to bring it to room temp before using it? I took pictures of everything, so I can show you what I mean. Please let me know if I was supposed to bring it to room temp before sifting and if that isn’t it, then should I just put in a quarter everything the next time I make it?? I used a cheesecloth and when I lifted it from the steamer the bottom was very soggy. How far from the bottom pan of the steamer was I supposed to be keep it? I just put my pan right on top of the bottom pot of boiling water…was it too close? Sorry for the long post, but I would really like to know what I did wrong so that I can fix it. Please let me know. Thanks in advance!
oh my, you must have been so frustrated! There are 2 types of frozen rice flour : Short grain rice flour and sweet rice flour. You need short grain rice flour for this recipe. I hope you got right one. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/frozen-rice-flour
“When I would rub the flour together they would form so many clumps, ..” It sounds like the rice flour is already wet? I don’t know the answer without seeing it. It shouldn’t be too wet. I usually thaw it out in the fridge because the rice flour goes bad easily at room temperature during the defrost
The frozen rice powder I have here in the Korean store says it has “No Salt”..is that the powder that I need to use? There is a sweet and non sweet version and they both say “No Salt”. Please let me know before I buy it, thanks so much!
excuse me, I want to clear this misunderstanding up…
maangchi say it’s soaked, not salted.
so, any regular frozen (not sweet) rice flour is ok!
:)
There was no misunderstanding, I know what Maangchi said about the rice flour being “soaked”….but since I have never bought any rice flour before I did not know there were different kinds (sweet & non-sweet)….I just wanted to make sure that “No Salt” was the way to go. When you have to print, in large letters, that something has “No Salt” in it…it makes you wonder if there is another kind WITH salt. It is the same thing as “Low-Salt” or “No Salt Added” or “Fat-Free’. But thank you for clearing it up ;-)
Yes, I used unsalted rice flour. So follow the recipe.
고맙습니다!
I have another question…I see that you did not boil the water before putting your rice cake on the top layer. So are we cooking it for 30 minutes AFTER the water starts boil or do we start the stove then end in 30 minutes??
yes, after boiling water, it will take 30 minutes
안녕하세요 Maangchi! I just want to say that the recipes I have made from your site have been great and they are turning out wonderful. A few mistakes have been made, but when I would redo them they come out even better. This is my next project that I would like to make. I just have one question for you, I see that you use a regular cotton cloth when steaming it. Can I use a cheesecloth? If not where can I get a regular cotton cloth like the one you used? I am looking forward to your reply, 감사합니다!
wow, you are so enthusiastic about cooking! Yes, cheese cloth will work well, too! Good luck with making fluffy rice cake!
Thank you, I hope it will turn out well too. I have another question. The frozen rice powder I have here in the Korean store says it has “No Salt”..is that the powder that I need to use? There is a sweet and non sweet version and they both say “No Salt”. Please let me know before I buy it, thanks so much!