Developing the Hallabong Yakgwa
When the Sweetnya R&D team first proposed pairing yakgwa with Jeju's signature citrus — the Hallabong — the reaction in the kitchen was split. Half the team thought it would be too acidic. The other half thought it would be the most exciting product we had ever made. Eleven months and 47 prototypes later, both halves turned out to be right.
The project began in late spring 2025, after a team retreat in Seogwipo, where Hallabong orchards stretched all the way to the coastline. Standing in one of those orchards, our head of R&D peeled a Hallabong, took a bite, and said the sentence that would define the next year of work: "This is the only citrus in the world that doesn't apologize for being sweet."
The Problem of the Acid
Hallabong is prized for its bright, almost floral acidity. Yakgwa, by contrast, is rich, oily, and deeply sweet. The first six prototypes were disasters — the citrus juice broke the dough, and the candied peel turned bitter when fried. We almost shelved the project. The kitchen logs from that period read like increasingly desperate dispatches: "dough split again, oil cloudy, peel scorching at 30 seconds."
For a while, we tried compensating with extra honey, then with reduced acid through cold pressing. Both approaches failed in different ways — the cookie either lost its identity or lost the Hallabong. We needed to stop fighting the fruit and start respecting it.
The breakthrough came from a 70-year-old yakgwa master in Andong, who suggested we treat the Hallabong peel the same way our grandparents treated yuja — slow-confit it for three days in honey before chopping it into the dough. The peel became chewy, fragrant, and stable. More importantly, the technique itself was traditional. We had not invented anything; we had remembered something.
The Forty-Seven Prototypes
The number 47 is worth lingering on, because behind it is a story about patience that we don't usually let ourselves tell. Each prototype required two days of confit, one day of dough rest, and a tasting panel of five team members. That is roughly four prototypes a week, every week, for nearly three months — and even then, most of them ended up in the discard bin.
The 41st prototype was the first one we considered launching. We waited six more iterations before we agreed it was actually ready. The final version uses Hallabong peel from a single orchard in Seogwipo, harvested in the third week of January, when the sugar content peaks and the peel is just thick enough to hold its shape through confit.
What You'll Taste
- A first hit of warm honey, classic yakgwa
- A second wave of floral citrus, almost like Earl Grey
- A clean, slightly bitter finish from the candied peel
- An aftertaste that lingers longer than a plain yakgwa, sweeter at first, drier at the end
What We Learned
The Hallabong yakgwa launches as part of Sweetnya's spring seasonal box. It is the first product where we felt the tradition push back, and we are grateful it did. The cookie taught us that adding a new ingredient is not really about the ingredient — it is about earning the right to put it next to honey. Sometimes that takes a phone call to a master in Andong. Sometimes it takes 47 tries. Always, it takes the willingness to throw the first six attempts away.