Butter Rice Cake: The New Dessert Trend Taking Asia by Storm!

[iNews24 reporter Seol Rae-on] As the hype around Dujjonku (the Dubai chewy cookie) cools, butter tteok is rising as the new dessert obsession.

On the 16th, industry sources said Shanghai-style butter tteok has recently caught the eye of both consumers and food brands as a fresh trend to watch.

Butter tteok traces its roots to Shanghai’s traditional dessert huang you nian gao. It’s made from a dough of glutinous rice flour and tapioca starch mixed with milk and butter, then baked. The result is a crunchy exterior with a chewy, almost stretchy interior — that crave-worthy “crispy outside, gooey inside” texture.

The butter tteok craze has spread rapidly across social media. As of the 16th, Instagram posts tagged #buttertteok have topped roughly 13,000. On TikTok, related videos have pulled in hundreds of thousands of views, keeping the buzz alive.

Search data reflects the same trend. Google Trends shows interest in butter tteok began rising earlier this month and hit a peak index of 100 on the 14th.

Still, some critics say the trend is being artificially manufactured by certain social media influencers.

On online forums, skeptical users have pushed back — “I’ve never seen this around me, yet everyone says it’s a trend,” and “Are distributors and influencers teaming up to force this craze?”