Korean Dessert trends
Part 1. A short history about the Korean dessert ( K-dessert)
First of all, if you are interested in K-dessert , you will need some background knowledge about K-dessert (especially) bread. I’m not going to talk about the history of bread in Korea, but I’m just going to briefly summarize the culture. The bread in Korea is still the main form of Japanese bread, which was brought over from Japan during the Japanese colonial period. In other words, it has developed from bread eaten as a snack rather than as a main meal like in Europe or the United States, so if you want to try a local Korean bakery, do not expect healthy or part of meal European bread. If you go to bakeries in Korea, Japan, or China, you can see bread containing sweet red beans(above picture). It is no exaggeration to say that red bean bread is the representative bread of Korea in Korea, but you can easily find bread made with these beans. Ah, of course, in recent years, as the number of enthusiasts(eating brad as a meal) and people’s overseas experience has increased, the concept of French bread or healthy bread has become established and has become way more popular than before. Most people still think of bread first when they think of dessert, and the size of the K-dessert market is enormous. According to a survey by Korea’s Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation (aT), K-dessert market size in 2022 is approximately KRW 12.5 trillion, growing by more than 5% compared to the previous year.
Part 2. Korea’s rapidly changing dessert culture & unique Korean’s things.
If you know Korea’s quick, quick, quick culture, you can imagine how quickly K-dessert culture disappears and new appears. When I think about the last 4-5 years, there was a time when there was a lot of king size of Castella (from Taiwan) everywhere, and then after few years its moved to macarons were popular. What I want to talk about here is not only the rapid pace of change, but also the unique Korean’s things coming to an end once they come from a foreign country and become Korean. As macarons became popular for a while, TTung(뚱 = fat or big)karon was created and expanded to stores overseas as a new type of macaron.
And through the COVID era, in fact, it seems that home baking and slow food were popular all over the world during the COVID era, and at that time, no-knead ciabatta, white square bread(Asian sandwich bread) in Korea also expanded their interest even in sourdough. I think it was time. And with the development of delivery(bike&app) culture, small bread(kind of tea bread or cookies) and Kropple (croissants made by pressing them in an Apple machine; this is a croissant with more butter than just basic dough, so you can find bread with a richer buttery flavor.) were added menu to almost cafes. It was sold as a menu item, and the heyday of small bread(kind of tea bread or cookies) began. Financier, madeleines, and especially canule were very popular. In addition, salted caramel taste is the basic small bread or cookies, and it has been recreated and expanded by adding coconut or garlic, or mugwort, injeolmi, and black sesame seeds. (Kind of Korea and Asian’s retro ingredients).
After that, with the introduction of brands such as America’s Ranji’s Donuts, domestic donut brands were created and the donut craze began. There was always a long line at every store, and especially in Korea, cream donuts filled with cream are very popular, and convenience store brands are now racing to develop and release new products, and their popularity is still incredible.
After that, the salt bread trend that originated in Japan suddenly began. Salt bread, called shio(Japanese = salt) bread, was characterized by an Asian-style croissant with butter inside and salt sprinkled on the outside to create a sweet and salty (sweet, salty, sweet and salty) taste.
Recently, there have been cases where traditional snacks that were eaten in the past have become talked about. It is an item called Yakgwa. Yakgwa is a traditional Korean confectionery and is a type of traditional Yumilgwa. It is made by adding sesame oil to flour sifted through a fine sieve, adding honey and alcohol, kneading it, stamping it on a Yakgwa board, engraving a pattern on it, and frying it in oil. It is said that in pre-modern times, oil and honey were rare and were treated as medicine, hence the word ‘medicine=약=Yak’.
A famous restaurant in a little-known neighborhood became famous for its Yakgwa, and two years later, you can still make a reservation online once a day, but the reservations are sold out within 1-2 minutes, so the person who bought the Yakgwa from the restaurant on the Internet It became common for be sold for twice the price. In addition, various items using this Yakgwa, including cookies, financier, and even cake, were popular, and this popularity continues to this day. Each convenience store has also released products in collaboration with traditional confectionery shops, so be sure to try them at least once. You can easily find it in Korea’s traditional markets and places that sell rice cakes, and these days, you can find it in many cafes as well.
And I think bagels are leading the dessert trend these days. It seems that there is still a style that refers to the chewiness of the bread to be called a unique Korean bagel style, but it doesn’t seem to be much different from existing bagels, and the variety of creams sold together is interesting. Perhaps because it suited the tastes of Koreans, it seemed to be the most famous when cream cheese mixed with green onions was served. Nowadays, sandwich styles called New York bagels with cream cheese and salmon have been released, and many bakery shops are rushing to open bagel stores.
Part 3. Number of cafes in Korea and cafe tours in Korea!
Korean consumers’ love for coffee continues in 2023. According to market research firm Euromonitor on the 23rd of last month, as of 2020, Koreans’ annual coffee consumption was 367 cups per adult, and the country consuming more than Korea was France, which consumed 551.4 cups, while the global average was 161. In terms of cups, Korea’s was more than twice that amount. Source: Shina Ilbo (http://www.shinailbo.co.kr)
Looking at the status of coffee shop startups, as a result of an analysis by the Korea Economic Daily based on data from the “Seoul City Commercial Analysis Service” in September 2022, the number of coffee/beverage stores in Seoul was 2,157 franchise stores (51.6%) compared to the end of June 2019. There is a rapid increase to 6,338, and the number of independent cafes has increased by 4,059 (27.4%) to 18,886. However, if I look at the number of cafes that have increased in our neighborhood alone this year, the number will be even higher in 2023, with the number of coffee shops per capita being 7 times that of New York. This is the current state of coffee shops in Korea, which some say is multiplying! So, I heard that there are a lot of young foreigners coming to Korea these days to tour coffee shops. Each cafe has different characteristics and different menus, so this is a tour where you visit cafes all day and take desserts and photos!
If you are interested in snacks and pretty places, such cafes in Korea are now overflowing, so I recommend planning your travel itinerary with K-dessert concept. The reason I am writing about K-desserts and cafes today is because I also like this topic. This is because I like it so much that I am very interested in it, and I thought that if had this kind of background knowledge before coming to Korea, It would be able to experience Korean culture more easily. Also, my travel style is to search for the country’s traditional snacks and drinks before going abroad, so I wrote this in the hope that there will be people like me. If you have any questions at any time, please leave a comment! If you leave your support, I will have the energy to prepare more interesting contents. Thank you for being with us today as well!!
If you wanna go to see my korea blog of bread review please click here
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