Dasik-beop (Pressed Tea Confection)

History

Dasik (다식, 茶食, "tea food") began as an adaptation of Chinese Song-dynasty pressed tea-cakes (團茶): steamed, molded tea was gradually replaced by grain flour bound with honey, though the "tea" name endured. A poem in the Goryeo-era Mokeunjip praises the dasik served at the Buddhist Palgwanhoe festival, showing it was already an aristocratic banquet food by medieval times. By the Joseon period it had become an essential ceremonial confection — above all for Confucian ancestral rites (제사), and also for weddings and birthdays. Its defining feature is the carved dasik mold (다식판), which presses auspicious characters and flower motifs — longevity (壽), fortune (福), lotus, chrysanthemum — into flours of glutinous rice, chestnut, black sesame, or pine pollen, worked with honey or grain syrup and often tinted in five symbolic colors. On the ritual table, dasik sat among the sweets offered to the ancestors. Jang Gye-hyang's method is one of the earliest recorded Korean-language dasik recipes: she kneads roasted wheat flour with honey and sesame oil, presses the cakes, and bakes them gently between hot roof-tiles over sand and paper — noting that a little cheongju (rice wine) makes them especially tender.

Ingredients

• mal wheat flour
• doe honey
• hop sesame oil
• cheongju (clear rice wine)

Instructions

1. Mix 1 mal lightly roasted wheat flour with 1 doe honey and 8 hop sesame oil; form the dough (a little cheongju makes them very soft).
2. In a pot, spread white sand, lay clean paper over it, and arrange the dasik on the paper.
3. Cover with a roof-tile and keep a low fire both above and below until done.
4. A cook-stove may be used the same way.