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In a world where image is everything, Stephanie Sok's new rice cakes have a couple great gimmicks going for them. Thinner rice cakes
have real crunchBetty Shimabukuro
Star-BulletinNo. 1, the catchy name -- Tweegies. No. 2, the machine -- sort of a baseball pitching machine that measures out a glutinous rice mixture, squashes it, bakes it at 400 degrees and spits it out with a satisfying POP, one every 10 seconds.
Sok sets up her machine from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. every day except Monday outside Daiei's Waipahu store, where she's been drawing crowds attracted to the machine and the samples.
Tweegies are thin rice cakes, 8 inches across. They have just 35 calories each, no fat and no sodium -- and the amazing this is, they have a nice, light, roasted taste. Nothing like those hard commercial rice cakes that have all the taste and appeal of cardboard.
The machine and the rice cakes are natives of Korea, where they are often flavored with anchovies, Sok said. "They're big on anchovies." Over the last year they've become trendy in New York and Los Angeles.
She imported a machine and started wholesaling the rice cakes two months ago to Ranch 99 Market, some Longs Drugs stores and Korean markets. A few weeks ago she began retailing herself, and hopes to expand to Daiei's Kaheka location next year.
Right now, her machine spits out about 400 Tweegies a day. They come plain or flavored with cinnamon sugar and cost $2 for a bag of seven, or three bags for $5.
Soks said they are popular with dieters and diabetics (the plain version), and may be served with toppings such as peanut butter.
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