Pine pollen tea snacks are songhwa dasik (송화다식), small yellow cakes that Korean households made by kneading pine pollen with honey and pressing the dough into a carved wooden mould. They were eaten with tea, set out at ancestral rites and stacked high on Joseon royal banquet tables. If you saw a tray of yellow discs stamped with flowers or Chinese characters and wanted to know what they were, here is their story, and where the same pollen goes today.
What songhwa dasik is
Dasik is written 茶食 in Chinese characters and means "tea food." It belongs to hangwa, the family of traditional Korean sweets, and it is never baked. Ground grain, seeds, chestnut or pollen is bound with honey into a firm dough, pressed into a mould and turned out as a small embossed disc. Songhwa means pine flower, the Korean word for pine pollen. In Korea the pollen came from Pinus densiflora, the Korean red pine, and it turns the cakes a soft yellow.
A full dasik plate mixes colours: yellow from pine pollen, black from toasted black sesame, white from rice, green from green soybean and red from omija berry. The Korea JoongAng Daily called pine pollen the costly ingredient on that plate in 2007. It still is. The Korean food writer behind Kimchimari says good pollen is expensive and hard to find even in Korea, and today songhwa dasik is rarely sold on its own. It mostly turns up as one or two pieces inside luxury gift sets.
Where dasik came from
Food scholars Lee Gui-chu and Chung Hyoun-mi went through the old records for a 1999 paper in the Korean Journal of Food Culture. They tie the start of dasik to the Goryeo dynasty (918 to 1392), when tea drinking spread with Buddhism and rice was plentiful. The first dasik used rice and wheat flour. Pine pollen, mung bean starch and roasted chestnut came later, with honey, sugar and syrup as binders. Moulds don't show up in the records until Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje, an 18th-century household manual.
By the Joseon dynasty dasik had become a ceremonial food. Accounts of royal banquets describe sweets stacked into towers about 55 cm high. Tea expert Lee Youn-za put it plainly to the JoongAng Daily: "In high class society, dasik was always served with tea."
Total testosterone rose from 362.5 to 448.4 ng/dL in 8 weeks.
Carved moulds called dasikpan
The mould is a dasikpan. Most are two wooden boards, though porcelain ones exist. One board holds the dough in small wells and the other carries the carving, so pressing them together stamps a whole row of cakes at once. A 2012 study of head-family confectionery in the Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture gives a set as 30 to 60 cm long and 5 to 6 cm wide.
The carvings were wishes. The characters 壽, 福, 康 and 寧 stand for long life, good fortune, health and peace. Lotus, plum, chrysanthemum, bamboo, peach and phoenix designs were common too, along with plain geometric rings. Families chose patterns for the occasion, one for an ancestral rite and another for a wedding or a 60th birthday (hwangap).
Ancestral rites, weddings and New Year
Dasik sits on the jesa table, the ancestral rite, as well as beside the teapot. In Gangneung on Korea's east coast, the city government records that the Yerim Society, a women's group, makes dasik and yakgwa by hand for the Shin Saimdang Memorial Ceremony. The city calls it the only female-led ancestral rite in Korea. Away from the rites, dasik appears at Lunar New Year, at weddings and at a baby's first birthday party.
Pine pollen only falls for a few weeks each spring, which kept the yellow cakes special. Korea's National Arboretum expects pine pollen from early May, and in the most recent year it reported, the release started on April 26, more than two weeks ahead of the mid-May starts of the early 2010s (Kyeonggi Ilbo, May 2025). The poet Park Mok-wol named his poem Yunsawol after the late spring month when the yellow dust drifts over the hills.
Songhwa-milsu, the pine pollen honey drink
Pollen and honey went into a cup as well. Songhwa-milsu (松花蜜水) is pine pollen stirred into honey water, one of the cold hwachae drinks that food writer Yoon Sook-ja described for summer in Koreana magazine in 2005. When people search for pine pollen tea, they usually mean this drink, or the cakes served next to a pot of green tea.
From pine pollen tea snacks to a daily habit for men
The yellow cakes were celebration food. Today men take the same pollen every day for what it brings.
In 1971 Šaden-Krehula and colleagues isolated testosterone, epitestosterone and androstenedione from Scots pine pollen. It was the first time those hormones had been found in a plant. Human studies came decades later. In a 2024 pilot study led by Wolkodoff, 10 men aged 47 to 78 took pine pollen for 8 weeks, and their total testosterone rose from 362.5 to 448.4 ng/dL. Their scores on the qADAM questionnaire went from 23.9 to 31.7. A 2025 pilot in 11 men recorded free testosterone moving from 10.48 to 11.72 ng/dL, while SHBG fell.
Men who take it daily report more drive and stronger mornings, morning wood included. Our full guide to pine pollen, its history and the research covers the plant in more depth, and how men use pine pollen day to day covers routines.
Why a dropper beats pressing cakes
Nobody is going to knead pollen into honey every morning, and a daily sweet adds sugar a man doesn't need. Mara's Pine Pollen is a spagyric tincture of wild-harvested Pinus radiata pollen. The pollen wall is tough, so the grains are cracked first. Then the pollen is extracted and the minerals left behind are returned to the liquid, so the whole plant ends up in the bottle.
Take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into water, tea, juice or a smoothie. It tastes soft and lightly earthy, with a faint sweetness that sits close to the pollen in a songhwa cake, minus the honey. There's no baking, no mould and no sugar. A 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days and fits in a desk drawer or a gym bag.
Check the glass on any extract you buy. Light breaks plant extracts down over time. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but the gold standard is dark Miron glass, which is what Mara uses.
Pine Pollen – Spagyric Pine Pollen Tincture
50 ml dropper bottle. Wild-harvested, cracked-cell Pinus radiata pollen.
Add to bagPine Pollen considerations
Contains alcohol. If you're pregnant, nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.
Questions people ask
What are Korean pine pollen cookies called?
Songhwa dasik (송화다식). Dasik means "tea food," and songhwa is the Korean word for pine pollen.
Are songhwa dasik baked?
No. The pollen is kneaded with honey into a dough, pressed into a carved wooden dasikpan and turned out ready to serve.
What is pine pollen tea in Korea?
Usually songhwa-milsu, pine pollen stirred into honey water and served cold. Songhwa dasik were also eaten alongside green tea.
Which pine does Mara's pollen come from?
Pinus radiata. Korean songhwa dasik traditionally used pollen from Pinus densiflora, the Korean red pine.
How much pine pollen tincture do men take?
1 to 2 droppers a day, under the tongue or in a drink. A 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.