Date-swirl Sweet Rice Cakes

Freshly made sweet rice cake is filled with dates and honey. The rice cake is then rolled to make a delicious pinwheel Asian-inspired dessert or snack recipe. This sweet treat is also gluten-free! The whole family is going to love this snack or dessert option.

Our easy date-filled Korean rice cakes recipe

Note that we do use a rice cake machine to make this recipe. If you do not have a rice cake-making machine, take a look at our other recipe that is similar. We love making fresh rice cakes (a.k.a. tteok) though! Freshly made rice cakes in a machine have a great chewy texture compared to using rice powder. 

I know seeing the recipe preparation time seems daunting, however, most of the time is spent soaking the sweet rice and letting the machine do the work. Plus, it doesn’t get much more authentic than this! All of the hard work is done for you by the machine! If you enjoy rice cakes as much as we do, a rice cake/mochi machine is a must-have. We love ours so much and how easy it is to make fresh rice cakes/mochi. 

Ingredients needed for these gluten-free rice cakes

• Sweet rice
• Salt
• Sugar
• Water

For the date swirl filling:

• Medjool dates
• Honey

A great gluten-free snack or dessert recipe

These Korean rice cakes make a delicious gluten-free snack or dessert option. These would go great with a cup of hot tea!

How to store and reheat Korean rice cakes

Rice cakes (tteok) are best eaten fresh from the mochi maker. However, if you have some leftovers, store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. You can also store leftover rice cakes in a freezer ziplock bag and store them in the freezer for up to 1 month. 

To reheat, microwave the rice cakes in 10-second intervals. Make sure you don’t put them in the microwave for too long because heating them up for too long will turn them hard as a rock. You can also re-warm them by putting them in a nonstick pan and slowly warming them up.

More snack or dessert recipes

• Black Sesame Korean Rice Cakes
• Matcha Rice Cake with Whipped Buttercream
• Steamed Sweet Red Bean Paste Buns (Jjinppang)
• Mochi Filled with Sweet Red Bean (Daifuku)
• Korean Soybean Powder Sweet Rice Cakes (Injeolmi)

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Date-swirl Sweet Rice Cakes

Yield: 12 Servings

Cook Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Additional Time: 1 day 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 day 1 hour 35 minutes

Freshly made sweet rice cake is filled with dates and honey. The rice cake is then rolled to make a delicious pinwheel Asian-inspired dessert or snack recipe. This sweet treat is also gluten-free!

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Ingredients

• 6 cups sweet rice
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp sugar
• ¼ cup of Water

For the date swirl filling:

• 15 large Medjool dates, seeds removed & finely chopped (about 1 cup)*
• ⅛ cup honey*

Instructions

1. Rinse the sweet rice with cold water until the water runs clear. Repeat as many times necessary until the water is clear (about 6-7 times).
2. Soak the sweet rice in cold water for 24 hours at room temperature on the counter.
3. After 24 hours, strain the sweet rice with a fine mesh colander. Leave it in the colander to allow it to continue to drain for about 30 minutes.
4. Put water in the bottom of your rice cake/mochi machine according to its instructions. There should be a compartment where you put the water under the pot in the machine.
5. Place the pot back in the machine, based on your particular machine model. Place all of the sweet rice in the pot.
6. Push the “Steam” button on your rice cake/mochi machine.
7. While the sweet rice is steaming, boil about ¼ cup of water. We usually do this in a coffee cup and warm the water up in the microwave. Add the salt and sugar into the hot water and mix together well until salt and sugar dissolves. Set aside for later.
8. When the sweet rice is done steaming, open the lid and wait for 20 minutes until all of the steam has released.
9. After 20 minutes is up, push the “Pound” button on the machine.
10. Intermittently throughout the “pound” process, pour in about ¼ of the sugar/saltwater mixture you made earlier. Wait a bit and pour in another ¼ of the sugar/saltwater mixture. It takes about 25 minutes for the machine to pound all of the sweet rice (the machine we have). Each machine could be a little different and take a longer or shorter amount of time. And you can see if you like it very finely or not.

For the date filling:

1. When the sweet rice is completed pounding, pour the sweet rice (now tteok) on top of a cutting board topped with wax paper. Note: if you have a small cutting board, you may want to split the Tteok into batches to fit your cutting board. Wax paper will help the tteok from sticking to the board.
2. You’ll notice the sweet rice cake starts to spread out itself and becomes flat. Try to flatten it out a bit more by stretching or pressing the sides out as evenly as possible.
3. Next, add the date filling and spread it in an even layer on the flattened tteok.
4. Take one side of the tteok, and start rolling it to create the pinwheel.
5. Once it’s rolled up completely, run your knife blade under warm water. This helps the tteok from sticking to the blade. Cut the tteok into rounds to create the date pinwheel center.
6. Enjoy!

Notes

*More or less depending on how much of the filling you would like in your rice cake. Feel free to add in more dates and/or more honey to your liking.

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