Dragon whiskers candy

[nursebee]

I could not exactly find a recipe exchange forum so thought to post here.

My wife and I went to Grand Asia Market in Raleigh NC this weekend and they had a candy maker there. He was making something called dragon whiskers. I'll describe what we heard and saw, then post some foreign language videos.

He said the candy itself was honey. He said a pot of honey was heated for 7 hours over a small flame. He let us touch a piece of it, it was quite hard, I would have guessed hard crack stage but he did not know the temperature he cooked it too. He then molded it into a circle (one vid I saw showed a hard tool used to do this) and stretched the circle. In front of him is a tub of corn starch. He took the ring and dipped it into the starch, then stretched and folded it over numerous times. Eventually this gets many fine strands of honey candy in the width and fineness of the softest hair. They cut or ripped about 2-3 inch segments of this off to wrap around crushed peanuts or a mixture of peanuts and coconut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk5cP...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm1ld...eature=related
search you tube for more

[Eaglerock]

PM Chef Isaac. If anyone would know, he would.

[GRIMBEE]

One of the other videos I watched showed mostly sugar being used to make the candy.

[nursebee]

We tried the plain string as he was making it and it had honey like taste

[MapMan]

I found this recipe - they use Karo syrup:

Dragon Hair Candy

Ingredients :
75g Desiccated coconut
75g White sugar
75g Peanut
38g White sesame
150g Corn syrup (white Karo)
1 bowl glutinous rice flour

Method :
(1) Bring corn syrup to boil over mild heat for 5 mins until thick. Put into refrigerator for 4 hours.
(2) Dig a hole in the middle of corn syrup & coat with glutinous rice flour.
(3) Stretch along the hole, when become a big ring and make it to 8 shape like
2 small rings and put 2 rings together. Repeat till it's like silk.
(4) Grate the peanuts, mix it with sesame & sugar.
(5) Cut the silk sugar into pieces, wrap it with mixed peanuts.

The alternative for us as beekeepers would be to use the traditional honey, of course, instead of the Karo. I think that you have to bring it to 133°C (272°F), and allow it to cool to 100°C (212°F) before pouring it into plastic molds.

I think the beard looks more like Curly, my billy goat's beard. Same color, same length.

Here's a wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_beard_candy

MM