Rice Cake and Tea Extravaganze

I revisited a café that I deemed to have had the best bingsu in Korea—A Flower Next to a Tree (담장옆에국화꽃)—this time not to eat bingsu (it is way too cold for that icy treat!), but to drink tea and sample its rice cake.

There were many different types of traditional and fusion rice cake on display in the store. These rice cake, whose beautiful colors were dyed with all natural ingredients (purple sweet potato, strawberries, kabocha squash, and mugwort), looked like roll cakes.

There were giant mochi, songpeyu, yakju, and rice cake with nuts.

I think the orange stuff is some kind of fried rice cake.

The oven-baked rice cake that I got was crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside.

The rice dough was mixed in with green peas, red beans, and walnuts (which I painstakingly had to take out).

I liked being able to enjoy two different textures on the outside and inside. The dough wasn’t overly sweet.

I had an herbal tea, while my friend got a kabocha squash latte. She said it really had a strong sweet squash flavor. Underneath the white foam was yellow squash puree.

The tea had a sweet aftertaste that lingered in my mouth for a good 30 minutes after I drank it. I wanted to brew it for the second time, but the taste wasn’t nearly strong enough.

The second rice cake I had was a giant mugwort mochi with red beans and walnuts filling.

I have never had a mochi that was filled with this much red bean puree. It was almost a bit too much because I personally prefer the chewier outside.

The red bean puree was too much and too sweet. I could tell that they used a lot of mugwort to make the mochi because I found long pieces of mugwort in the dough!