Lifestyle

21 Traditional & Inventive Korean Desserts for 2025

by: Kristy Bowen

Published on Feb 14th 2025

Korean desserts have sweet and rich flavor profiles, with a focus on natural ingredients that aren't overly sugary. In addition to unique combinations of flavors, they also often have a stunning presentation, whether it's tiny mooncakes filled with sesame seeds and honey (songpyeon) served during harvest celebrations, delicate trays of colorful tea cookies (dasik) or frozen treats you can grab out of the freezer.

What is a popular dessert in Korea? We’ve rounded up a list of some of the most popular treats, both modern and traditional, as well as some Korean desserts that are easy to make at home with just a few ingredients. Make them to celebrate the Korean harvest festival (Chuseok) or as fun international dessert options that go well with other South Korean-style meals like Korean fried chicken or Korean BBQ. Follow our list to add to your new and international Christmas dessert ideas or Thanksgiving desserts.

Popular Korean Desserts

1. Hotteok

A sweet pancake with a brown sugar syrup filling, this steamy Korean dessert is both crispy, chewy and slightly gooey inside. The filling is usually hot and is made from a mix of brown sugar, honey and finely chopped nuts or seeds, typically walnuts, peanuts or sesame seeds. This is a seasonal dessert served in Winter as a street snack and served in a small paper cup.

2. Sweet Rice Mini Bundt Cake

A tiny molded bundt cake, this Korean dessert is made from rice flour instead of wheat, so it's naturally gluten-free and tends to be lighter and spongier than traditional bundt cakes. When mixing, fold red sweet bean paste into the batter. You can also add chopped walnuts, almonds or dried fruits like cranberries and raisins to the batter.

3. Sujeonggwa

This sweet cinnamon ginger punch is often served with other sweet treats, usually after a big meal since ginger is often associated with helping digestion. It mixes ginger with water and cinnamon sticks to create a warm drink, though you can also make a cool version for sipping. It usually comes for free at premium Hansik (Korean food) restaurants and is served similarly to an aperitif. Traditional Korean culture often promotes health in taste, but this sweet ginger tea checks both boxes.

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4. Bingsu

This well-known Korean shaved ice dessert, similar to the popular Japanese dessert kakigōri, uses red beans and sweetened condensed milk as a base for all sorts of delicious fruit-flavored syrups, including flavors like berries, watermelon and lemon. Traditional bingsu or pat-bingsu has sweet red bean paste and tiny pieces of chewy injeolmi (Korean rice cake or tteok). The amazing sharp iced texture, combined with the milk, melts in your mouth for a delicate blend of flavors. You can also top it with nuts and fresh fruits.

You can make homemade bingsu quite easily, all you need is to shave ice by placing it in a blender or putting the ice in a plastic air-tight bad and smashing it with a mallet. Then add a fruit of your choice like mango or strawberries, milk, water and condensed milk. This is a sweet and delicious alternative to sorbet or ice cream. You can serve it alone or add some vanilla ice cream for extra creaminess.

5. Twisted Donut (Kkwabaegi)

A popular fried dough pastry, this Korean dessert is deep-fried, leading to a chewy exterior and a soft pillowy texture inside. Twist before dropping into a deep fryer then coat with a mix of sugar and cinnamon before serving.

6. Kkul-tarae

A Korean version of the popular Chinese treat, Dragon’s Beard Candy, this dessert is created from a mixture of honey and maltose that's kneaded into strings. This dough is used to wrap fillings like fruit, candied nuts and chocolate. The name means “honey skein.”

7. Bungeoppang

A very popular dessert and street food, this fish-shaped treat starts with a delicious pancake batter that's molded in a cute scaled form and filled with a sweet red bean filling. You can also find them filled with chocolate, sweet potato or custard. Similar to hotteok, it's usually served in Winter only.

Modern Korean Desserts

8. Makgeolli Ice Cream

Made from fermented Korean rice wine (makgeolli), this frosty treat has a slightly sour flavor and a consistency similar to sorbet. You can even make your own at home with rice wine, heavy cream, egg yolks and maple syrup without an ice cream maker.

9. Jolly Pong Shake (Korean Cereal Milkshake)

This sweet Korean dessert is sure to please anyone with a love of Saturday morning cartoons and cereal nostalgia. It mixes puffed rice cereal (called Jolly Pong cereal in South Korea) with milk, vanilla ice cream, ice and condensed milk. Blend everything together and then top with more cereal as garnishing. This is a great East-meets-West combo.

10. Melona

This manufactured colorful ice pop treat is sold in stores worldwide and can be found in a wide variety of flavors, including melon, from which it takes its name, but also banana, strawberry, mango, coconut, blueberry, pistachio and grape.

11. Churros with a Korean Twist

Originating from Spain, churros blew up in South Korea in the 2010s and have remained popular ever since as they are tasty and affordable. Trust the Koreans to put their own spin on foreign desserts to make it their own. Churros in South Korea are often served with a drizzle of matcha, sweetened red bean or black sesame sauce with other unique twists like fillings of cream cheese or sweet potato.

Traditional Korean Desserts

12. Dasik

Made from sesame seeds, rice flour or soybean flour mixed with honey, these traditional Korean dessert cookies are known for their rich colors that are a result of natural flavors like matcha green tea and sesame paste. They are usually molded into small cookies with unique designs that are presented on a colorful platter and served with tea.

13. Bukkumi

A popular pan-fried tteok (rice cake) made with glutinous rice or sorghum flour and shaped like half moons. You will find this pan-fried treat usually decorated with edible flowers and leaves. The filling includes a white adzuki bean paste, ground sesame seeds, cinnamon, sugar and honey.

14. Yaksik

Often made with jujube fruit, chestnuts and pine nuts, this sweet rice dessert is created by mixing sticky rice with honey and a brown caramel sauce. You can also add fruits like raisins, cranberries and other nuts in the rice or as a topping. It's a popular dessert served at Buddhist temples when you go on a Templestay.

15. Yakgwa

With the key ingredient of honey, this layered cookie dessert is also associated with the fall harvest or Chuseok, as well as celebrations like marriages and festivals. It blends wheat flour, rice wine, sesame oil and ginger, creating a layered Korean dessert that takes part of its name from “medicine” in reference to beliefs about honey having medicinal powers.

16. Songpyeon

Also typically associated with the fall harvest celebration, Chuseok, this rice flour cake dough is shaped and folded into a small crescent moon. You can find them with all sorts of fillings, including red bean paste, toasted sesame seeds, jujubes, honey, dates or chestnuts. They are usually cooked over a bed of pine needles, giving them a green and fragrant flavor. Making songpyeon and mandu (Korean dumplings) over Chuseok is a beautiful family tradition.

Easy Korean Desserts To Make at Home

17. Dalgona

This popular Korean street food recently got a boost in popularity for appearing on Netflix’s “Squid Game” series. To create a treat also known as "sponge candy" or "honeycomb candy," combine melted sugar with a teaspoon of baking soda to create a frothy candy that, when it hardens, will present a chewy texture and toffee-like flavor. Heat the sugar with a ladle before adding the baking soda. Press the foamy substance into a flat disc.

Traditionally, dalgona is also a game, where the recipient must try to eat the exterior of the image without breaking the image. If you do this, you get another one for free! These days, it's really popular to include dolgona flavors in other popular desserts like ice cream and tiramisu, but also in other things like lattes and croissants.

18. Fresh Korean Strawberry or Banana Milk

This sweet and fragrant drink is made from milk and homemade strawberry or banana syrup. Even better, it involves no cooking or heating. Combine milk, honey, sugar and lemon juice with the milk and fruit syrup in a blender. You can also serve it with bits of strawberries in the bottom or on top. The classic manufactured version is made by the conglomerate Binggrae if you're lucky enough to visit Korea or go shopping in K-town.

19. Goguma Mattang

This Korean candied sweet potato presents a fluffy inside surrounded by a sweet crunchy exterior made from caramelized sugar. Chop the sweet potato into square pieces, then fry them in 340 degree hot oil. After they are fried, drain them and create a syrup with the oil in the pan and caramelized sugar. Once they have begun to caramelize into a brown and sticky syrup, add the sweet potato back to thoroughly coat it.

20. Sweet Potato Rice Donuts

These easy donuts can be made at home with just a few ingredients. You can cook the sweet potatoes any way you like, such as frying, boiling, baking or even microwaving until they are soft. Mash them into a paste then mix with rice flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add some milk to create moisture, then form into small balls. Use a deep fryer or a pan to fry them, then roll them in a cinnamon and sugar mixture.

21. Korean Sweet Rice Cake Bars

Another popular Korean dessert you can easily make at home, these delicious cake bars can be gluten and dairy-free, depending on which ingredients you choose. They present a slightly sweet taste and a soft consistency, with added texture created from seeds, nuts and dried fruits. To create, mix rice flour, baking soda, salt and sugar (you can vary the sugar to taste to be sweeter or less so). Add water and honey (you can also use milk) to create a thin batter before pouring in other ingredients like fruit and nuts. Spread on a greased baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees before cutting into bars. You could also use this as a healthier Christmas cake idea as an alternative to fruit cake.

Korean Desserts FAQs

What Is the National Sweet of Korea?

The national sweet of Korea is typically considered to be bingsu, a sweet shaved ice that can be served with all sorts of flavors and additions. With a name that means ”frozen water,” the most popular version of this Korean dessert usually includes a sweet red bean topping.

What Is the Most Popular Sweet in Korea?

One of the most popular sweets in Korea is dalgona, a chewy and sweet candy usually served as discs with decorative moldings of various shapes on top. Korean children make a game of them by trying to separate the center image from the rest of the circle around it without breaking or crumbling.

What Are K-Style Desserts?

K-style desserts rely greatly on certain elements, including sweet red bean paste and rice flour. This not only means that many are naturally gluten-free, but usually have a flakier and fluffier consistency than many Western desserts made with wheat flour. These Korean desserts also revel in more natural ways of sweetening and adding texture like honey and syrup versus corn syrup and artificial sweeteners.

Any of these great Korean desserts would make a hit at your next gathering for their unique flavor combinations and natural ingredients, as well as their whimsical and pretty presentation.

For even more sweet delights and fun gift ideas, check out other experiences happening on Classpop!