[TALKING TRENDS] 'Microissant'

Seo Jeong-min
The author is a senior reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Desserts of a variety of colors and shapes are popular among young Koreans these days, as they enjoy taking injeung shots, or photos to "prove" something really happened. Their desire to exhibit what they’ve experienced is reflected in the so-called K-desserts. Ddung-caron, the name for a fat macaron with a thick layer of fillings, is one popular dessert.

Macarons originated from France. Two meringue-based coques encompass fillings like jam, ganache, butter cream and so on. The golden ratio of the two coques and filling is 1:1:1. The sandwich-shaped confection can be eaten in just one bite.

But ddung-carons, also called K-macarons, are filled with an excessive amount of fillings. Besides the traditional soft and sweet cream, they may have fruits like strawberries or grapes, nuts, or injeolmi, a Korean rice cake, between the coques. As could be expected, it is fat and thick.

Searching ddung-caron on Instagram, you can see results of more than 720,000 injeung shots. In those pictures, people are holding the desserts with their thumb and index finger fully splayed.

But food trends never stop changing. The very next dessert recently drawing attention is the microissant. You must already know what it is. As the word is a combination of the prefix micro, and croissant, the size of a microissant is just a little bit bigger than a thumbnail.

As the fat, thick maracon emerged when mukbang gained popularity, the microissant appeared as sosik, which refers to eating small portions, become a new trend. As celebs known to be sosikja, which means people who eat small servings, are drawing attention, many are participating in the “sosik challenge” online.

Targeting the followers of the new trend, the distribution industry has been releasing mini food products. No one hates tasty foods. Some people just want to eat a small amount. Considering that we can reduce food waste, small-sized products is all good.

BY SUNG JI-WON [sung.jiwon@joongang.co.kr]