Muffin is a traditional Korean festival snack, a half-moon shaped glutinous rice pastry filled with sesame seeds, chestnuts, red beans, black beans and jujube paste, etc. When it is steamed, the bottom of the steamer will be covered with pine leaves so that the aroma of the elegant pine leaves can seep in warmly, hence the name "muffin".

In the past, every Mid-Autumn Festival, mothers-in-law used to make muffins with their own hands as a snack for worshipping ancestors and gods. According to Xiao Yuanqing, marketing strategy manager for the Korea Tourism Organization, autumn is the season of harvest, and beans and grains are taken from the earth and made into cakes before being offered to the heavens, representing people's sincerest gratitude. The half-moon shape shows respect for the moon, which is full and bright, while the half-moon's rays are half-shadowed, and hope is brewed in the process of moving from half-moon to full-moon. "Eating muffins is a way of remembering the hopefulness of the moon," he says. The moon is a natural rhythm, and humanistic nostalgia may be like the scent of pine leaves in the background.

"When I see a rice cake, I think of festivals. In the past, during the Mid-Autumn Festival or New Year's Eve, the aroma of glutinous rice was spreading from every house, and neighbors would swap rice cakes to see who made the best ones, as if it were a competition. That was because people used to think that the better a woman's muffins were, the better chance she had of finding a good husband. Park Jung-hyun, who was born in Busan and now works in Seoul, recalled that her grandmother used to take her, her sister and her cousins to make muffins together when they were young, but while they were playing, the muffins were shaped into rabbits, stars and piglets, and her grandmother didn't mind putting them in a steamer to steam them together, and as soon as they lifted the lid of the pot after the aroma of the rice was overflowing, the group ate them right away.

"Super ...... super delicious, that is hard to describe the flavor, after growing up never had a better muffin than grandma's!" She described it exaggeratedly. In addition to praying for blessings, the muffins also represent the taste of every family; although life in the metropolis is now busy, and the market sells all kinds of muffin flavors, there are few opportunities to make their own, but the heart of the Mid-Autumn Festival and family*** to enjoy this sweet taste is unchanged. It also reminds me of my childhood when I was with my grandma rolling soup dumplings and pressing rice cakes, which was an eternal moment.