There's something about this time of year that inspires me to spend full weekends trying new recipes, snuggled up in my apartment. This ambitious, yet simple, project to make hand-pulled cotton candy, also known as dragon's beard, is next on my list!
This hand-pulled cotton candy is a traditional Chinese treat known as dragon's beard. Also present in Turkey and Pakistan (known as pişmaniye and pashmak, respectively), these bundles of cotton candy strands look like something you shouldn't be able to make by hand. The process involves melting sugar, allowing it to harden, and then stretching it over and over until the strands become as fine as thread.
Once stretched, nuts or chocolate are nestled in bunches of the sugar strands. This looks like a fun Saturday afternoon project to try out with the culinary overachievers in your life. Watch the video below, courtesy of The French Culinary Institute's blog Cooking Issues, and give it a try!
• Watch the video: Powers of Two: Hand-Pulled Cotton-Candy ‘Round the World
Related: Sweet Treat Recipe: Fluffy Vanilla Marshmallows
(Images: Flickr user dragonbeardcandy licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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Comments (7)
My husband just made this the other night...there was a lot of grunting and groaning coming from teh kitchen!!!
Kudos to your husband...Looks like it would make a TON of a mess though.
Ooh I had these on the street once in Seoul! I'll have to try these! Yumm!
Would love to hear if anyone's made this. I love Dragon's Beard and I am so thankful tot he FCI for figuring out how to make this "secret" recipe but seriously, it looks like a huge PITA.
Awesome. I will definatley be making this soon!
Great video, this looks amazing and surprisingly not impossible! There's an idea in there somewhere for Christmas, I can't quite come up with what I want to use it for...maybe spiral it up into a snowman? Or just lay sections flat in the shape of a heart? Maybe shape crude snowflakes with them?
Hard to decide without knowing what the final texture is like! Soft or hard? Sticky and brittle or like fur?
How odd...this is the 3rd blog in the past week I've seen talk about this candy and urging people to make it. It actually seems quite easy to prepare and I'll give it a shot when I'm not up to my eyeballs in sugar cookies I need to make for Christmas!