Over the Lunar New Year Holz, my mom and I attempted some homemade ddeok! :) There are so many different types of Korean ddeoks, but the kind we made is called '백설기' or 'white rice powder cake' (loose translation). There are also many different variations within this type of rice cake, depending on whether you add dried fruits, nuts, or even food coloring. We went pretty traditional with sweetened kidney beans, but you can get creative and experiment to make the ddeok your own!
Here's what we did:
{ Ingredients }
400g dry white rice cake flour
250g water
4g salt
60g sugar
Sweetened kidney beans, or soaked raisins (as few or as many as you like)
400g of dry rice cake powder ('멥쌀가루')
Dissolve 4g of salt in 250g of water. Then pour the salt water into the bowl of rice cake powder, along with the sugar, and mix well until the liquid is all absorbed by the rice flour. It's easiest to just rub everything together with your hands. You will have some lumps, which is okay.
Cover the bowl and let sit for 30 minutes.
Then use a larger-holed sieve and push the lumpy rice flour through it, so that you end up with a bowl of soft fluffiness. This is probably the hardest and most time-consuming part of the whole process. But don't get discouraged, it will be well-worth it in the end!
Here is a package of sweetened red kidney beans we ordered from an online store (http://www.ieunha.com). I'm not sure if you can find this in regular supermarkets, but I'm sure you can make your own sweetened beans. Or you can use raisins- just soak them in some warm water to plumpify them (I'm making up my own words now...).
We put about 3/4 cup of red beans into our rice cake mixture. You can vary the amount based on how sweet you want your rice cake to be.
Unfortunately, I don't have any good photos of the steaming process, but what we basically did was lay a thin, cheesecloth-like material, over a holey steaming tray, and then place a frame (a mold or springform cake frame will do) on top of that. Then we filled the frame with the rice cake & bean mixture, patting it down gently and neatly. Then we placed it all into a large pot of boiling water, and let it steam for about 25 minutes (~35 minutes if your cake is really thick/high).
Holy crap, our ddeok was delicious! And the funny thing is that in the midst of all our excitement, my mom and I forgot to add sugar in our ddeok! We were worried that it would taste like bland rice, but in the end, the red beans were so sweet that we really didn't need any extra sugar. It was perfect~~ Yay for happy accidents.
Incase my directions are confusing, here's a great tutorial video by Maangchi, showing how to make rainbow rice cake. The process is essentially the same, except that she mixed and sifted hers in separate batches, while adding food coloring to make the 'rainbow' effect. Good luck!!