Rice cake parfaits and knots of love: Making Korean desserts and handicrafts in Seoul's hanok village 

One humid July weekend, I went looking for an escape from the heat. I ended up not in a heavily air-conditioned trendy cafe, but inside a traditional Korean house, or hanok, with its wooden doors wide open to the courtyard.

Inside Namsangol Hanok Village in Jung District, central Seoul, visitors removed their shoes and entered the old wooden home, gathering around low wooden tables. Through the open doors and windows, we could see the curved tile roofs of the surrounding homes. Quiet conversations filled the room.

Fifteen participants were taking part in the 70-minute “2026 Namsangol Summer Dessert Experience,” a hands-on program that combined three Korean summer desserts with a beginner-friendly knot workshop, offering participants an up-close-and-personal introduction to Korean food and crafts in a traditional hanok setting.

Opened in 1998, Namsangol Hanok Village is a cultural complex centered on five hanok from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Originally located in different parts of Seoul, the houses were relocated and restored as exhibits and venues for traditional cultural programs.

The session began with a contemporary parfait made with traditional Korean ingredients, followed by tastings of jeungpyeon rice cakes and wonsobyeong punch.

Later, participants moved to another room to turn brightly colored cords into dongsimgyeol knots.

A perfect K-parfait

Hanok are built with wooden pillars and beams, tiled roofs and rooms arranged around a courtyard. Korean domestic life developed close to the floor, with people sitting on floor cushions and eating or working at low tables rather than chairs and raised dining tables.

This floor-centric culture shaped the dessert-making experience from the beginning as participants sat close together around small tables, with the open courtyard only a few steps away.

The first activity was making a seasonal parfait.

Although I often cook, I had never made a dessert before. With all the ingredients prepared in front of me, the task seemed simple, but as I assembled the ingredients into a cup, preparing the colorful parfait felt surprisingly different from cooking a meal.

Unlike a typical parfait made with ice cream, cereal or fresh fruit, the version served at Namsangol included several ingredients familiar to Koreans from traditional snacks and desserts.

I began by placing twibap, or puffed rice, at the bottom of a clear cup. Twibap is made by expanding grains under high heat and pressure. It is light, crisp and slightly nutty, and Koreans often eat it on its own or bind it together with sweet syrup to make snacks.

The next layer was cubed castella, a soft sponge cake which evokes childhood memories. The pieces created a fluffy layer that could absorb the yogurt and syrup added later. While the puffed rice provided a dry crunch, the castella introduced a softer, more cake-like texture.

I then spooned plain white yogurt over the cake. It slowly sank into the spaces between the cubed castella, connecting the dry layers beneath it. Deep blueberry syrup followed, spreading across the yogurt and creating a vivid streak inside the cup.

The next ingredient made it distinctly Korean.

Small pieces of injeolmi were placed on top.

Injeolmi is one of Korea’s best-known rice cakes. It is made by steaming glutinous rice, pounding it into a sticky dough and coating the pieces with roasted soybean powder. Its texture is dense and chewy, while the soybean powder gives it a mild, nutty flavor.

Koreans have long eaten injeolmi during celebrations and family gatherings, but it is also a common everyday snack. In modern Korea, it frequently appears in shaved ice, ice cream and other fusion desserts. The small pieces of injeolmi added another texture to the parfait. The puffed rice was crisp, the castella soft and absorbent, and the injeolmi chewy even after coming into contact with the yogurt.

The final decoration was a piece of yanggaeng. Yanggaeng is a firm, smooth jelly commonly made with sweetened red bean paste, agar and sugar. It is denser than Western fruit jelly and usually has a rich but restrained sweetness.

Finally, I added a flower atop the parfait.

Against the white yogurt, purple blueberry syrup and pale soybean powder coating the injeolmi, the yanggaeng made the finished cup resemble a decorative garden. I pushed my spoon through every layer to reach the puffed rice at the bottom.

The first bite began with the light crackle of the grains. The yogurt-soaked castella was soft and moist, while the injeolmi remained chewy and took a little longer to eat. The blueberry syrup added acidity, and the yanggaeng brought a deeper sweetness at the end.

Rather than producing one uniform flavor, the dessert changed with each spoonful. Crunchiness, softness, and chewiness appeared in different combinations depending on how deeply the spoon was inserted.

What stood out was how comfortably Korean ingredients such as puffed rice, injeolmi and yanggaeng fitted into a contemporary parfait.

Instead of presenting traditional foods only in their original forms, the activity placed them inside a dessert format familiar to many international visitors. It allowed someone unfamiliar with Korean food to compare the ingredients one by one without feeling out of place.

A more traditional taste

Next, participants tasted a more traditional treat — pale pink pieces of jeungpyeon, a traditional fermented rice cake made with non-glutinous rice flour and makgeolli, Korea’s cloudy rice wine.

In the batter, makgeolli serves as a fermenting agent, helping the rice cake rise and imparting a faint fermented aroma.

Foreign visitors may associate Korean rice cakes with a dense, chewy texture. Jeungpyeon is different.

Fermentation creates small air pockets inside the batter, making it lighter, softer and spongy.

Its mild pink color and rounded shape also contrasted with the bright, layered parfait. While the parfait combined several strong textures and flavors, the jeungpyeon offered a mild taste centered on rice and fermentation.

Another dish was wonsobyeong.

Wonsobyeong consists of small balls of glutinous rice dough wrapped around a sweet filling and served in honeyed water or an omija drink. The version we tried was served in a reddish punch made from omija, a berry whose Korean name literally means “five flavors.” The fruit is traditionally said to contain sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness and pungency.

In Korea, dried omija berries are steeped in water to make tea or a brightly colored summer punch. Its deep red color and tart flavor make it especially recognizable among traditional Korean drinks. I lifted one of the small rice cakes with a spoon. A thin layer of red liquid clung to its smooth surface. The chilled, tart omija drink and the chewy glutinous rice cake created an experience quite different from Western desserts centered on bread, pastry or cream.

An eternal knot

The 2026 Namsangol Summer Dessert Experience runs at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on weekends through Aug. 2, with two additional sessions on Aug 8. Each session is approximately 70 minutes and is limited to 15 participants aged 8 and older. Tickets cost 20,000 won ($14) and are available through the official Namsangol Hanok Village website.

The program is conducted primarily in Korean. Instructors can provide simple explanations in English, but the organizers caution that they may not be fluent, meaning communication could be limited.

The program was designed to reinterpret the leisurely ways Koreans once coped with the summer heat through a contemporary lens, according to Park Hyo-jin, a project manager for the Namsangol summer programs. 

“Traditional desserts are no longer seen as old-fashioned,” Park said. “Seasonal ingredients, visually appealing presentation and the hanok atmosphere allow younger people to rediscover them as something both familiar and refined. We wanted traditional culture to become something participants could experience with their senses in the present, rather than a relic they simply observe.” 

After finishing the desserts, we moved to another room for the second part of the program: making a decorative bell with a traditional dongsimgyeol knot.

Several colors of cord were available, and each participant could choose their own. I selected red because Koreans commonly associate the color with good fortune and joyful occasions. The vivid cord stood out against the brown wood of the hanok.

Dongsimgyeol are knots that symbolize hearts being joined together. It is associated with harmony, unity and lasting relationships. Once completed, the knot would be attached to a small bell and turned into a decoration that could be hung near a door or window.

At first, the knot appeared complicated. The cord had to be folded, crossed and passed through several loops in the correct order. However, a step-by-step illustrated guide was placed on the table at every seat. I could lay the cord directly over the guide and compare its position.

Following the diagrams, I folded the red cord into its first loop and passed one end over the other. I briefly lost track of which end needed to move next, but the guide allowed me to return to the previous step without starting over.

The instructors also walked between the tables and carefully checked each participant’s progress. Whenever a loop twisted or one side became tighter than the other, they patiently showed us which section to loosen and where to pull. With the guide in front of me and the instructors nearby, the activity was easier than it first appeared. Even someone with no previous experience in traditional Korean knotting could follow the process one step at a time and finish the piece.

My finished knot was not perfectly symmetrical, but that made it feel more personal. I had chosen the color myself, followed each step and corrected the shape with my own hands.

Those hoping to give the experience a try need to act quickly, as each session is limited to just 15 participants.

BY HUR KYUNG-SEOK [[email protected]]