November 2026 Theme: Hotteok, Play, and Winter Memories
This session is a family-friendly workshop. Bring your children and make hotteok together.
(No ticket is required for children.)
November is one of my favorite months. I notice the changing season not only through the colder air and warmer clothes, but also through the arrival of cinnamon in cookies, coffee, and pastries. As a cinnamon lover, it is the perfect time of year.
Korea has a popular winter snack that also features cinnamon: hotteok. Hotteok is a sweet, yeast-risen pancake filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. As it cooks, the filling melts into a warm syrup.
I have heard many visitors to Korea say that eating freshly made hotteok was one of their favorite experiences. They stood in long queues, ordered despite language barriers, and happily waited for a hot pancake from a grandmother-like street vendor. Unless you are allergic to the ingredients or avoiding sweets altogether, hotteok is difficult not to love.
One of my childhood memories is visiting the public bathhouse with my mother and sister every weekend during the winter. On the way home, we would almost always stop at a hotteok stall that appeared only during the colder months. For us, eating hotteok meant that winter had arrived. It meant we had overcome our weekend laziness, cleaned ourselves, spent time together, and were ready to start a new week.
Eating hotteok was fun when I was a child, and it still is today. You hope to pick one that is nicely crisp on the outside. Secretly, you also hope that it is filled with plenty of runny brown sugar. Then comes the challenge: taking careful bites so that none of the syrup escapes, while enjoying the mixture of sticky filling and soft dough until the very last bite.
What will we do?
Please bring your children (up to two per household; contact me if you would like to bring more) and make hotteok together. Preparing the dough takes some time, so while we wait for it to rise, we will play a few simple games and enjoy each other's company.
We will use brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts, and grated cheese to make eight hotteok per household, or eight per participant if you attend on your own. It will be a wonderful opportunity to share a beloved Korean winter street food with friends, family, neighbors, or colleagues.
Take Something Home
At the end of the session, we will package the hotteok together with a postcard as a small gift to take home and share with someone who comes to mind when you think of childhood, winter, cinnamon, play, or simple moments of warmth.
