Koreans love cake. They love everything about cake - making it, shopping for it and of course eating it. As with all their other food it's pretty to behold and comes in a bewildering variety of colours, shapes & sizes.I'm not complaining, it's mostly very nice and my expanding girth is testament to its virtues. But something isn't right. Not everything below the 38th parallel is as quite as it should be.
The problem I suspect is a knock-on effect of their enthusiastic 'what-if-we...' attitude. Koreans just can't resist pushing the envelope at design time, tinkering with the ol'favourite to add a little something of their own unique culture. Pickled bloater intestine for example.
Imagine if you will a meeting of the Seoul Bakers guild, New Products Sub-committee 15.
Jong-il: "It's a blue bun... But somehow different... I need inspiration..."
Moo-hyun: "Cherries?"
Jong-il: "Hot Damn! Yes! A blue bun with cherries!"
Moo-hyun: "It's missing something... Maybe a glaze..."
Jong-il: "I've got it! Big salt crystals!"
Moo-hyun: "Yes! Ladies & gentlemen we have another winner..."
It looks like a sausage roll. An inch long flattened flaky pastry cylinder, a couple of slits in the top and an egg-glaze coating. It even has something brown in the middle resembling sausage. Don't be fooled. Don't let your guard down for even a second. It's a jam roly-poly.
Those little brown chocolate bonbons? With the pink hundreds and thousands? Forget it. Soy sauce dumplings. I guarantee.
I have a theory that a well meaning charity or development agency at some point air-lifted in a jumbo container of patisserie equipment:
Min-sik (as buffoon): "Now what do we have here..."
Sang-ho (smokes, spits, looks mean): "It's a machine..."
Min-sik: "For making pastry?"
Sang-ho: "But dammit - we have no flour, butter or sugar?"
Min-sik: "No problem! We have beans, fish & kim-chee & food-colour!"
Oh - and the expanding girth? I blame the green doughnuts...
