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Dasik (Pressed Honey Confection)

Name: Dasik (Pressed Honey Confection)
Prep time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 100 g roasted soybean flour; 100 g black sesame flour; 100 g pine pollen or roasted rice flour; 120 ml honey; 2 tbsp sugar; 1 pinch salt; 1 a carved dasik mould; 1 a fine sieve

The Korean confection served with tea, and the only one on this site made with neither water nor heat — so the whole question is where its solidity comes from. Baekseolgi sieves rice flour into a mould and lets steam gelatinise the starch so the particles weld together. Dasik has no steam, so the only thing binding it is honey, and the rest is the pressure of the carved mould. That is why the flour has to be roasted beforehand, why it has to be sieved very fine, and why there is almost no margin in how much honey goes in.

Ingredients

8servings

The flours (15-18 pieces of each)
roasted soybean flour · yellow soybeans, roasted and finely ground100 g
black sesame flour · black sesame, roasted and finely ground100 g
pine pollen or roasted rice flour100 g
Honey syrup
honey · about 40ml for each flour120 ml
sugar · boiled with 1 tbsp water to loosen a thick honey2 tbsp
salt1 pinch
Equipment
a carved dasik mould · a chocolate mould or a small measuring spoon will do1
a fine sieve · the flour goes through it twice1

Steps

Sieve each flour twice through a fine sieve. Nothing in this confection is ever cooked, so a lump stays a lump to the end, and coarse particles have too little contact area to hold together.
⏲ 10 min
Check the flours are roasted. Raw flour cannot be used here — there is no heat anywhere later in the process, so raw starch simply tastes raw. If what you bought is raw, toast it dry over low heat until it smells nutty and let it cool completely.
⏲ 15 min
If the honey is stiff, warm it with 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp water and the salt over low heat and cool it to the consistency of runny honey. Added hot, it cooks the flour into lumps.
⏲ 10 min
For each 100g of flour, add the honey in stages, starting with 30ml, and rub it in with your fingers. A handful that holds its shape and crumbles at a flick is right — the same test as baekseolgi uses for moisture, run on honey instead of water.
⏲ 10 min
Add another 5ml at a time if it will not hold. Erring generous is the more dangerous mistake — too much honey and it never firms, then weeps after a few days.
⏲ 5 min
Press the mixture hard into the mould. All the energy that turns this into a solid is that pressure. Scrape the top level and turn each piece out.
⏲ 20 min
Lay them on paper and leave them somewhere dry for half a day or more. They firm as the honey redistributes its water into the flour, so the next day is much firmer than the moment they came out of the mould.
⏲ 120 min
Store in an airtight box with paper between the layers, at room temperature. The fridge draws moisture in and makes the surface tacky.
⏲ 5 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

The flours: black sesame, soybean, pine pollen, wheat, chestnut, jujube, mung-bean starch and powdered seunggeomcho leaf are the traditional ones. Five colours on one plate is the five-direction arrangement.
Starch dasik: with mung-bean starch, rice syrup is sometimes used instead of honey and the mixture is lightly cooked. That breaks this page's "no heat" premise, and gives something much harder.
Coloured with omija: steeped schisandra berry turns starch or wheat dasik pink. Any added water lengthens the drying.
Next to baekseolgi: two confections from the same country start from the same material — dry flour rubbed through a sieve — and go in opposite directions. One is bound by steam gelatinising its starch; the other by honey and pressure.
Against the fried-and-steeped hangwa: yumilgwa such as yakgwa are kneaded, fried and then steeped in syrup. Dasik has nothing you would call a dough, and is neither fried nor steeped.

Tips

It is the only confection here made with neither water nor heat. Baekseolgi sieves rice flour into a mould and lets steam gelatinise the starch so the particles weld. Dasik has no steam, so the binding is honey's viscosity and the rest is the pressure of the mould. Which means when it fails, the cause is usually not the mixture but the sieve and the press.
Raw flour will not do. With no heat anywhere later, unroasted soy or rice flour tastes exactly as raw as it is. Shop "roasted soybean flour" is roasted; the raw stuff from a mill is not.
How fine you sieve decides how hard it sets. Coarse particles have less area in contact, so they need more honey to cohere, and more honey means it never firms. Sieving twice always beats adding honey.
Approach the honey from below. Too little is fixed with another 5ml; too much cannot be undone. Honey is hygroscopic, so an over-honeyed dasik stays soft and then weeps after a few days.
The next day is firmer. Water from the honey takes time to move into the flour. If it looks crumbly straight out of the mould, wait half a day before judging it.
No mould? A chocolate mould or a measuring spoon works. The carved pattern is the tradition, but what makes the confection hold is the pressing, not the pattern.
Do not refrigerate. Airtight at room temperature is right; honey drawing in moisture makes the surface tacky and blurs the pattern.