Finally, success! Using yeast has long been a trouble of mine. It’s so tricky! You need to make sure that the water is not too hot that it’ll kill the yeast, or not warm enough to activate it. But I decided to give it another try, without expecting a good result. To my surprise, this attempt actually worked~ words cannot express how proud I am of myself right now, haha. 

Ingredients

1 cup warm water
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
~2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 handful of walnuts
2 dashes of cinnamon

Directions

1. Dough: In a large bowl, add the water, sugar, yeast, salt, and oil, then stir them together. Fold in flour. Cover bowl with a plate / plastic wrap and set aside in the microwave (off) or oven (off), for 1 hr.
2. Filling: Combine brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon.
3. Fold dough a couple of times and set aside, covered, for ~20 mins.
4. Fold dough a couple of times. Flour cutting board and hands well, to prevent dough from sticking. Knead dough (pull ends of dough to center), and sprinkle more flour if needed, a few times until not as sticky. Then portion dough into 8 fairly equally-sized balls.
5. Stretch ball to place filling in the center. Pinch opposite sides of the dough to secure the filling inside the ball.
6. In a well-oiled pan, under medium-high heat, add a ball and flatten out a little bit into a circular shape. Once the bottom is brown (~2 mins), flip pancake. Flatten the edges and center, and cook until brown (~2 mins).
7. Remove pancake from pan. Cut the pancake in half, serve and eat immediately!

8 pancakes.

Tip

Warm water – After boiling water, let it sit for ~1 hr.

Note

Pictures 1 & 2 are the same pancake. Picture 3’s pancake was the next batch.

Reference

Maangchi – Sweet pancakes (hoddeok)