You must have heard of Dubai chocolate: the sticky, indulgent confectionary filled with pistachio cream, tahini and shreds of knafeh pastry, which has become a global sensation.
Now the decadent bar has inspired South Korea’s latest dessert craze. The Dubai chewy cookie has been selling like wildfire – and even restaurants that don’t usually offer baked goods are trying to get a nibble of the market.
Despite its name, the cookie’s texture more closely resembles a rice cake, and is made by stuffing pistachio cream and knafeh shreds into a chocolate marshmallow.
Shops are selling hundreds of cookies within minutes and the frenzy has sent prices of key ingredients surging, local media reported.
This South Korean twist on the viral Dubai dessert first took off last September, after Jang Won-young from the girl band Ive posted a photograph of the chewy cookie on Instagram.
While they currently sell for between 5,000 ($3; £2.5) and 10,000 won, prices are expected to climb due to strong demand.
And apart from dessert shops and bakeries, other restaurants – from sushi bars to cold-noodle shops – are now offering the dessert.
Local convenience store chain CU launched its Dubai chewy rice cake in October, and has sold some 1.8 million pieces of it in the last few months.
“Our manufacturing plant’s production capacity cannot keep up with demand,” a company representative told Yonhap News.
So obsessed are the South Koreans with the cookie that someone even created a map that tracks shops selling the dessert, as well as their stock levels, in real time.
Some stores have started imposing limits on how many cookies each customer can buy. The trend has also sparked online chatter among gig workers on whether hardware stores and cleaning companies should also start cashing in on Dubai chewy cookies, The Korea Herald reported.
Such demand has driven up the price of pistachios, with local media reporting that a major supermarket chain has raised prices by 20% this year.
Counterfeits have also emerged, spurring some consumers to call them out in their online reviews.
“I bought two for 11,000 Korean won, but there’s no knafeh, and the exterior isn’t marshmallow. It’s heartbreaking,” wrote one, in a review quoted by The Chosun Daily.
Several food critics say the Dubai chewy cookies have taken off in South Korea because of how thick and dense they are.
“It reflects Korean food culture, where visual overwhelmingness matters more than balance or harmony of ingredients and flavours,” food critic Lee Yong-jae told The Chosun Daily.
