Have you ever eaten Dragon's beard candy?

       It has a high sugar content (19%), and 2% saturated fat content. By comparison, cotton candy is fat-free with a very high sugar content (94%). Dragon's beard candy has a very short shelf life. It is highly sensitive to moisture and tends to melt when exposed to higher temperatures, notably during warm weather.

History

The legend of Dragon's Beard Candy was first notably practiced during the Chinese Han Dynasty. As the story recounts, an imperial court chef entertained the Emperor one day by performing steps involved in making a new confection. The process of making the candy involved stretching a dough-like mixture composed of rice flour into small, thin strands. These strands reminded the Emperor of a dragon's beard and were sticky enough to adhere to one's face quite easily, so thus the concoction was there-forth named as Dragon's Beard Candy. The name may also be attributed to the status of the mythical dragon as a symbol of the Chinese Emperor, so presenting the confection as Dragon's Beard Candy was deemed acceptable due to the social nature of the candy, as it was reserved only for the ruling class, likely due additionally to the complexity of the preparation process. Dragon's Beard Candy provided a source of conflict several centuries later, however, as during the Chinese Cultural Revolution the Red Guard, acting in accordance to the orders of the Communist Party of China, forbade the Chinese populace to hold activities that could be attributed to the Han Dynasty. Because the initially rare nature of the candy was at this point combined with government enforcement of disdaining this art, the craft of making Dragon's Beard Candy became even more isolated and sparsely practiced. Nevertheless, in recent years, the art has resurfaced in tourist destinations such as various street festivals and has even spread to farther reaches of the globe through dedicated masters of the task.

Recipe

Ingredients:

1000 Grams Sugar

100 grams of corn syrup

2 Cups water

5 drops food dye

1 tsp vinegar

1 Container Corn starch

Instructions:

1. Mix together water and food dye.

2. In a pan on medium heat combine sugar, corn syrup, water, and vinegar together. Don't stir.

3. Bring mixture to 271°F. Once it reaches the temperature take off the heat, carefully. Let sit until the sugar looks clear with not too many bubbles.

4. Pour syrup into plastic or silicone molds. Cool for 2-3 hours.

5. Cover work surface with corn starch. This will make the candy not stick to you.

6. If the sugar has hardened too much microwave for 10-second increments until moldable.

7. Make a hole through the center of the candy. If you used the donut mold skip this step.

8. Hand pulls the candy, making sure it is consistently the same thickness throughout. Once the circle is getting big, make a figure eight, fold it over, and continue to stretch. Repeat until you have the number of strands that you'd like.