[Goguma Maeul]Sweet potatoes get new life as dessert
Sweet potato pastries from Goguma Maeul. By Cho Jae-eun
Desserts for one, chocolate in particular, have been a consistent battleground where primary emotions of guilt, longing and elation convolute like a plot for a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Murakami Haruki once wrote that women have a special place inside their stomach saved for dessert. And for a while, that special place inside the stomach of Korean women has been filling up with sweet potato desserts in the form of pies and cakes.
Personally, I’ve never been attached to things that look like vegetables but are deceivingly sweet ― Korean red beans, chestnuts and sweet potatoes. Call me ignorant but I like my vegetables green and my meat brown.
Nevertheless, sweet potatoes are enjoying a second life as a healthy, relatively low calorie alternative ingredient for desserts in Korean cafes and bakeries, so much so that at the food corner in Shinsaegae department store, there is a whole booth dedicated to them, called “Goguma Maeul,” Korean for “Sweet Potato Town,” selling sweet potato pastries.
Their main item is the sweet potato pie roll, which looks like a giant spring roll. The pie was a knockout.
The outer shell was delicate yet crispy, light with a touch of nutty tang.
Pastries are a bit of a risk in Korea as many bakeries use a thick, greasy shell, but this met the standard.
The filling was mashed sweet potato, smoothed to a semi-mousse effect.
The textures of the filling and the outer shell were quite complimentary. An extra nod goes out to them as the sweet potato filling was not dry, not overloaded with cream.
The other pastries were fine enough, all with the same filling, but the pie roll was the best of the bunch as the crust’s crisp thin layers of chewy dough in the middle served as the perfect yin to the sweet yang.
Goguma Maeul is located in all food corners at Shinsaegae department stores.
By Cho Jae-eun Staff Writer [jainnie@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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