Making Bungeo-ppang (붕어빵) At Home, Why is it so hard? Is it Just Me?

Bungeo-ppang (붕어빵; “carp bread”) is a fish-shaped pastry stuffed with sweetened red bean paste or custard cream or others. It is one of South Korea’s most popular winter street foods.

There are Bungeo-ppang and Ingeo-ppang which both are a fish-shaped pastries, but the difference between them is;

• Bungeo-ppang has a light taste because of its thick and crisp dough made from flour and with an overall round shape.

• Ingeo-ppang has a tender and chewy taste with the addition of glutinous rice and butter to the flour dough.

So, today I challenged myself to make Ingeo-ppang at home!

When I went to Korea before, I bought a Ingeo-ppang mix and a fish-shaped bun pan. However, due to my laziness, I put it off for a long time for making it. But, finally, I decided to try making Ingeo-ppang at home today!

I didn’t welcome winter the most out of the four seasons. Still, I think the reason why I waited a little bit for winter was because of various winter snacks such as hotteok, gukhwa-ppang, bungeo-ppang/ingeo-ppang, hodu-gwaja, takoyaki, roasted sweet potato, hoppang, hot fish cake, and its soup, etc…

Ugh! I really can’t stand these!😋

However, in Finland, where winters are particularly long and harsh, it is difficult to find such a variety of winter foods like in Korea. That is disappointing and I miss those Korean winter snacks a lot.

In the past, I brought a hotteok mix from Korea and made it often, but since I love ingeo-ppang / bungeo-ppang so much, I always miss it a lot. When you take a bite of it, the outer part of it is so crispy, and cream inside coming out and it’s so delicious🤤 Oh, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.🤤

Before baking it in a fish-shaped bun pan, I decided to make with the waffle machine at home by changing the pan for pastry. I though I could easily make and eat it often in the future if this becomes easy.

What’s the result?

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Ta-da!

It is miserable itself. I kind of guessed from the beginning that it might be going to fail because the pan seemed to be pressing something flat.

Why the bad feelings never fail to bring bad things?

It was more difficult to clean the waffle maker afterward🥲.

Second, I finally tried to make ingeo-ppang with an exclusive pan that I brought from Korea.

The result?

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Voila!

It looks a little good, but it’s still not the shape of the ingeo-ppang I want…

It’s to flat and soggy…

I wanted to bake it crispy, but I don’t know how to bake it to make it crispy…T.T

How on earth should I bake it to make it crispy?! If you know anything, please give me some tips about it…🙏🏻

After that, I tried another method, putting it in muffin silicone and baking it in an air fryer.

However, this also failed.

There isn’t even a picture of this lol

I made about 6 of them, and my husband and I ate one each, and 4 went into the trash…👋🏻👋🏻

Eventually, the remaining ingeo-ppang mix and pan went back to the top of the kitchen cupboard.

When I saw other people making it, it seemed easy to make it and I felt confident that I could do it too.

However, why isn’t it working? why is it so hard?😮💨

Still, my husband’s pick was that baked ingeo-ppang in a ingeo-ppang pan.

Thank you, hubby, for eating everything well without any complaining😘

After that, I was craving something sweet, so I bought some oat biscuits.

It is made from 100% domestic Finnish oats and is said to be lactose-free.

What does it taste like? It was delicious. I highly recommend enjoying it with coffee or black tea.

Anyway, I miss so much Korean street food. Korean winter snack. Korean delivery food.

These days, the number of Korean restaurants in Finland is increasing, but since many restaurants are run by Chinese people, it is very difficult to experience the true taste of Korea.

When I go to Korean restaurants here, I usually go to places run by Koreans, but it still feels like it lacks the authentic Korean taste (since the ingredients are probably different…?), which is a shame.

These days, I am craving gukbap (a Korean dish made by putting cooked rice into hot soup), ingeo-ppang, and roasted sweet potatoes.