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Dragon’s beard candy is a staple of Chinese and Lunar New Year celebrations, but in the U.S. and Canada, a generation of candymakers are determining the best way to pass the difficult art to a new generation

Even as a kid with severely limited patience, I knew the dragon’s beard candy from Jimmy Pan’s cart was worth the wait. Every weekend for nearly three decades, Pan judiciously filled orders of the white, fluffy candy from his stall in Toronto’s chaotic, cacophonous Pacific Mall. The candy’s stretched sugar strands, wrapped around a crunchy core of peanuts, coconut, and sesame seeds, create a series of textural sensations on the tongue: Some strands dissolve into a soft mass while others shatter into feuilletine flakes, before the whole thing morphs into a chewy, crunchy, jumble of nougat. Pan’s shop filled PacMall’s grid-like corridors with long lines of locals and out-of-towners, who made the pilgrimage from New York, Milwaukee, Detroit, and as far as Los Angeles. Somewhere in there, I was holding hands with my mom, inching closer to my prize.

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Originally posted by AdagioM:
Fascinating! I’ve never heard of this before. I’d love to try it.

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Originally posted by Axtremus:

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Originally posted by AdagioM:
Fascinating! I’ve never heard of this before. I’d love to try it.

I have had it may be 3 or 4 times in my life so far, and everytime I witnessed it made fresh from a “puck”. Indeed it‘s hard to find. It certainly looks very labor-intensive and I do not know why no one has figured out a way to mass-produce this in some sort of automated fashion.

There are “how to” videos on YouTube for this if you ever feel like attempting to make it at home, e.g.:

https://youtu.be/xCIPoPG3gb4