Fresh Flower Pancake (Hwajeon)
Koreans make Hwajeon in spring with Korean azaleas (진달래꽃 jindalae kkot) or pear blossoms (배꽃 bae kkot). The dough is made from rice flour and water. Gluten free.
- Prep time
- 10 min
- Cook time
- 10 min
- Yield
- 10 servings
- Difficulty
- MEDIUM
Ingredients
Quantities are shown as originally provided.
- 1 cup sweet rice flour ((or mochiko rice flour))
- 1/4 tsp fine salt
- 6 Tbsp hot water
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil for frying
- bunch of your favorite edible flowers
- honey ((for dipping))
Instructions
- 1
Boil water. Let it cool for 10-20 seconds or so. Add this almost boiling hot water to flour mixture, 1 Tbs at a time. Mix it well and form into a ball. *** BE CAREFUL not to burn your hands. Do not touch the wet flour directly but scoop the dry flour onto the wet area and gently toss and mix with your hands.
- 2
When you have added 5~6 Tbsp of water, you should have a dough. Koreans call this kind of dough making Ickbanjook (익반죽). Ick means “cooked” and banjook means dough. Because hot water is used, the dough gets somewhat cooked while it is made.
- 3
Knead for 1-2 min to make sure dough is evenly mixed.
- 4
If you see that there are still some dry, flaky areas, add 1 T of hot water. Mix.
- 5
Divide dough and form 1 inch balls.
- 6
Press each ball and shape into flat pancake shape – the size of a dollar pancake or about 2 to 2.5 inch wide.
- 7
Press a flower or leaf onto each pancake. If your flower is too big, you can also take a few petals and use that instead. I used only 2-3 petals of nasturtiums here. The bottom greens are Italian parsely (didn’t have any other good greens).
- 8
Heat oil in pan and fry each flower pancake on med-high heat until the bottom side is lightly browned. To best keep the color of flowers, shower the flower side with hot oil to cook thoroughly. Alternatively, turn the hwajeon over 1-2 seconds to flash cook the side with flowers.
- 9
Optionally, brush each flower pancake with honey or sugar syrup. Or serve with honey for dipping.