Tanghulu: glass fruit

Recently, I stumbled across the food blog Jasmine and Tea. It highlights different types of popular foods in Asia and includes their recipes. One of the treats I saw on the website was an aesthetically pleasing fruit dessert, which I later discovered is called tanghulu. Tanghulu is essentially candied fruit made by dipping fruit in a sugar syrup and it is a very popular Asian street food that originated in China. It is traditionally made using hawthorn berries, but it has become more common to use a variety of fruits. For my tanghulu, I used strawberries.

Tanghulu only requires three simple ingredients: fruit, water, and sugar. I live right next to a small, local strawberry farm, so I decided to go pick them fresh myself for my tanghulu. Following Jasmine and Tea’s recipe and instructional video, I began by washing and cutting the stems off the strawberries and then thoroughly drying them. Dryness of the fruit is crucial as moisture will not allow the sugar coating to adhere and harden properly. I then placed three strawberries each on bamboo skewers. The skewers make them easier to dip and eat.

To make the sugar coating, I used a one to two ratio of water and sugar: a half cup of water, and a cup of sugar. I only planned to use nine strawberries, so these measurements made a bit too much syrup for me. Normal cane sugar works fine, but I chose to use raw sugar since it was my first attempt at making tanghulu and raw sugar is harder to burn. Combine the water and sugar into a saucepan on low heat and stir until the sugar is mostly dissolved, but you are still able to see some granules in the water. If you over stir or stir past this point, you will ruin your syrup. After this step, increase the heat to medium so that the syrup has a good bubble to it. Jasmine and Tea’s instructions showed that the syrup would be ready when it had thickened enough so that when a wooden chopstick was dipped into it and then immediately dipped into ice water, it crunched when eaten. To get to this point for me, it took about 20 minutes.

Once the syrup is ready, it is imperative that you act fast in dipping and twirling your fruit into it. If you wait too late, the syrup will harden too much. After I dipped my strawberries, I set them on parchment paper to cool. The syrup hardened very quickly to create a glass-like sugar coating around the strawberries. After they had cooled, I took my first bite. The sugar coating was very light and crunchy, and not hard to bite into at all. The sweetness of the sugar combined with the little bit of tartness from the warm strawberries made for a delectable combination that I thoroughly enjoyed. Using the raw sugar also gave it a richer flavor with notes of caramel.

I would definitely recommend Jasmine and Tea’s tanghulu recipe; it was easy to follow and worked very well. I was able to succeed on my first try and it tasted delicious. If you’re looking for a beautiful, easy-to-make summer treat, tanghulu is just the thing for you!