Yakgwa

Origin

Yakgwa — literally “medicine confection” , from yak (medicine) and gwa (confection) — is one of the oldest documented Korean sweets. The earliest references appear in Goryeo-era (918–1392) Buddhist temple records , where honey-and-sesame fried pastries were prepared as offerings and as banquet sweets. Yak in the name reflects a pre-modern Korean understanding of sesame oil and honey as medicinal substances — the pastry was framed as nourishing, not merely pleasurable.

Joseon court records list yakgwa among the standard royal banquet sweets, and provincial gazetteers mention regional variants — Gaeseong, Andong, and Jeonju all developed their own house styles. The pastry has been continuously made for at least eight hundred years, making it one of the longest-lived recognisable Korean desserts.

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What it is

A dough of wheat flour kneaded with sesame oil, honey, rice wine (cheongju), and ginger juice, rested briefly, then pressed into flower-shaped wooden molds and deep-fried in oil at low temperature until the lamination naturally separates the dough into thin internal layers. The fried discs are then submerged in a hot honey-ginger syrup — sometimes for hours — until the syrup penetrates every layer.

The finished texture is unlike anything else in the Korean dessert vocabulary: crisp at the outermost edge, then progressively softer toward the centre , where the layers compress into a near-paste of honey-saturated wheat. Diameter sits around 4 to 6 cm, weight around 25 g. The pastry is meant to dissolve in the mouth rather than be chewed.

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Cultural context

Yakgwa is the canonical ritual sweet. It appears on jesa (ancestral rites) altars, on Buddhist temple offering tables, and on traditional wedding platters. For most of the 20th century yakgwa was unfashionable — too sweet, too dense, too associated with elderly relatives. Korean dessert culture had moved on to Western imports.

Then, sometime around 2022, yakgwa returned. Korean cafés started serving artisanal versions; Gen Z accounts on Instagram and TikTok began posting yakgwa-latte and yakgwa-cookie recipes; convenience-store chains GS25 and CU released industrial yakgwa lines that sold out repeatedly. By 2024 yakgwa had become the unlikely face of halmeoni-chwihyang (“grandmother-taste”) — a generational embrace of pre-modern Korean food that Gen Z reframed as cool.

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Variations

Gaeseong yakgwa is the most highly regarded historical variant, formerly produced as royal tribute. Mosi-yakgwa uses ramie-leaf flour for a green tint. Cheonggak-yakgwa is shaped into a small block rather than a flower. Modern bakery variants include cube-shaped yakgwa, salted-butter yakgwa, espresso-glazed yakgwa, and the polarising cream-cheese yakgwa of the 2023 café boom.

Korean diasporic versions in Los Angeles and New York simplify the syrup step — often substituting maple syrup for honey to reduce cost — but the flower mold and lamination remain non-negotiable.

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How it’s made

The dough is the slow part. Wheat flour to sesame oil to honey at roughly 10:2:2 by weight , with rice wine and ginger juice added for both flavour and yeast-like aeration. The dough is kneaded only briefly — over-kneading destroys the lamination — then rested for at least an hour before shaping.

Frying happens in two stages. First at 120°C for ten minutes to expand the internal layers without browning; then at 160°C for another five to colour the exterior. The cooled yakgwa is dropped into hot syrup (honey, ginger juice, water, cinnamon) and left to absorb. The shorter the soak, the crisper the result; the longer, the more melting. Three hours is a common compromise.

References

The Goryeo-era origin is documented in Lee Sung-woo ’s 한국요리문화사 (Kyomunsa, 1992) and in Michael Pettid’s Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History (Reaktion Books, 2008). The 2022–2024 yakgwa revival and halmeoni-chwihyang phenomenon is covered in Marie Claire Korea (November 2023) and The Korea Herald (March 2024 ).