Waygu Fat Soft Chewy Caramels

This is a tale of a special caramel.  Caramels, as you must know, are those creamy, buttery, chewy, melt in your mouth and oh so darn delicious candies.  It’s amazing how simple they are to make, magic up some sugar and ta-da you have these lovely soft and chewy candies.

So back to our special caramel.  We’ve made caramels before but this time we tried something totally different.  Different how?  Well, what happened is that we got our greedy little hands on some wagyu fat.  Wagyu, yum, amiright, that totally luscious and ever so expensive marbled beef.  With this wee bit of waygu fat on our hands we were like, what should we do?  And, as it turns out, the answer was to make the most amazing caramels ever:  Waygu Fat Soft Chewy Caramels to die for!!

Strawberry Dusted White Chocolate Truffle

Here's a sweetie just in the nick of time for Valentines Day!  Recently my little girl and I have been just loving us some white chocolate, that luscious creamy deliciousness is just so sexy!  

So that's what led us to make some white chocolate truffles.  Seriously, truffles are sooo easy to make and sooo super yummilicious.  Easy and delicious, my favorite food combo of all time!  And what could be better paired with white chocolate than strawberries, amirite?!  So here it is, our Strawberry Dusted White Chocolate Truffle is totally something to fall in love with!

Homemade Turkish Delight Candy

I first discovered the mysterious name 'Turkish Delight' when immersed in magical world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, reading of poor Edmund lost in wickedly wintry Narnia and captivated by the evil White Witch, the Queen of Narnia, after one deliriously delicious bite of Turkish Delight candy.

"Is it dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently.  "What would you like best to eat?"

Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund.

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight.  Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.  He was quite warm now, and comfortable." -The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Candied Winter Melon Tea 冬瓜糖涼茶

As the season turns and the days grow warmer it's time for some "cooling teas" also known as 涼茶.  Chinese believe that the food that they eat balance and nourish the body to good health, especially with respect to the needs that seasonal changes bring to the body.  Cooling teas help to dispel the heat, or 熱氣, caused by warm weather.

This particular cooling tea caught my eye because the main ingredient is one of my favorite fruit candies, the candied winter melon 冬瓜糖.  We've actually made winter melon tea before from fresh winter melon and it was plenty delish.  So now we got to try it with candied winter melon. 

The results were most satisfying and a lot easier to make. The candied fruit provided an intense but totally light vanilla sweetness with grassy notes and a touch of smokiness to a most delightfully refreshing Candied Winter Melon Tea 冬瓜糖涼.  This fragrant herbal tea was a cinch to whip up!

Chinese Date Walnut Candy 棗泥核桃糕

I'm sure that every Chinese kid has eaten these delicious chewy traditional Chinese Date Walnut Candies 棗泥核桃糕 at sometime or the other.  Made of Chinese dates and walnuts, its soft sweet fruity chewiness packed full of walnuts, it's a delicious treat anytime. For the Chinese New Year, it is the perfect traditional candy to fill your Chinese Tray of Togetherness 攢盒 with!  

We decided to go for broke this year and make these Chinese Date Walnut Candies at home and the resulting fresh yummiliciousness was even better than we expected.  Fresh homemade candies really rock the flavor!

Black Halloween Caramel Candy

Boo!!  It's almost time for All Hallow's Eve!  Little ones are astir, planning the delightful and devilish details of their soon to be awe inspiring Halloween outfits.  (While we parents sweat and toil away in the background, attempting against all logic and sanity to produce that very vision twinkling in our youngster's eyes.)  

My little girl at first decided to go trick o' treating as a goth/spirit fox but now changed to that absolutely cool and cute goth Marceline the Vampire Queen, from the wonderfully animated TV show Adventure Time.  

Soooo in the spirit of 'goth' I decided to make black colored caramels to give away as our Halloween candy. Homemade caramels are absolutely fabulously tasty and wonderful, so much better than caramels with tons of preservative.  Add a drop of black food coloring and bango!  A perfectly spooky and slightly creepy and yet terribly yummy candy to please all and any Halloween trick o' treaters!

Chinese Preserved Plum Caramel Lollipops 話梅棒棒糖

Oooh! I'm quite pleased with these lollipops, they'll do...  What a fun and easy thing to make at home and pass out to all the crazy lollipop lovers in your path!  But wait, first I have to warn the uninitiated, the secret of these lollipops is that they have a heart of Chinese preserved dried plums which are cheek puckeringly sour and yet sweet at the same time.  

Each of these fun and lovely to look at traditional Chinese Preserved Plum Caramel Lollipops, or 話梅棒棒糖, have a licorice flavored dried plum encased lovingly in hardened caramel, sooo good to lick and suck slowly, sweet and sour coming together in your mouth to satisfy and sooth your candy soul to yummilicious perfection.

Turkish Delight Sorbet

It's been hot, hot, hot this summer in Hong Kong and an oncoming typhoon has made the weather even more toasty roasty than before.  "I'm melting...melting..."  as the Wicked Witch of Oz did screech.  

So it seemed the thing to do to make this chillingly appropriate Turkish Delight Sorbet, a delightful, elegant and cooling bit of rose flavored sweet ice just balanced with a touch of tart lime.  Super easy to make, wonderful to look at and just the thing for the hottest days of the year!

Almond Nougat Candy

Okay, I seriously like nougat a lot...a very a lot.  It's so festive!  And yummy.  Every once in a while I will splurge on prettily wrapped bags of nougats to nibble on,  bags that empty way too quickly into the tummy of the nearest nougat addict.  (Umm...that would probably be me.)  

The problem I found was that I always wanted to eat a LOT of nougat, darnit that honey scented soft fluffy whiteness interspersed with the nutty crunch of roasted nuts makes it just simply irresistible and addictive.  So I figured if I wanted to eat a LOT of nougie maybe I should try to make some at home and pig out standing in the comfort of my own kitchen.  

But then I got discouraged cuz there was a lot of stuff in nougat making like sugar 'crack' stage and glucose syrup and so on and I thought, meh...this is too hard.  (I've been struggling with sugar work...more on that later.)  

But then...then I found a classic nougat recipe that was really simple and straightforward to make, only three ingredients! and a bit of time.  With this traditional recipe I made my own Almond Nougat Candy (just in time for wrapping up as gorgeous homemade Christmas gifts!  After I nosh my way through the first batch, that is...) and what can I say, it's soooo yummilicious!  Gosh darn it, this freshly made nougat, just soft enough to be deliciously chewy, really beats the socks off anything you can buy in the stores!

Candied Lemon Peel

This simple little homemade fruit candy is lemon nirvana.  There's simply no other way to describe it!  The smell of the candy, the taste of it...oh...my...lemony goodness!  Just so fresh, sweet, lemony and full of sunshine.  Soft lemony tenderness encased in a thin satisfying crunch of crisped sugar, an 'oh so heavenly!' aroma and taste of fresh lemon, a soft gleaming yellow that is just so comforting to the soul.  

This Candied Lemon Peel is just about divine in our experience, not just the best candy that we have made at home but one of the top of all the candies we have ever had.  Plus it's made from just lemon and sugar!  How cool is that?!

Chinese Candied Kumquats 糖漬金橘

This Chinese New Year recipe is a delicioso combination of a couple of things I really love: candy and fruit, and something really lucky for the Chinese New Year, the kumquat, or 金橘.  金橘 translates as "gold orange" which symbolizes that good fortune (which for the Chinese always means MONEY!) will find you in the upcoming year.

Which, to be honest, is always a good thing, right?  More money means more yummy food, amiright?  What people usually do is to buy big pots of kumquat laden trees (tying on lucky red pocket envelopes all over it) to put in their house and invite in the luck for the new year.  

This year we decided to not just decorate our house with kumquat trees but to make some 'golden' food to ingest into our bodies so as to increase our likelihood of golden luckiness even more!  And thus we present to you our version of the Chinese Candied Kumquat 糖漬金橘, a choice snack for the festivities of the Chinese New Year, bringing you not only yummilicious delight for your sweet tooth but also a fun way to swallow some of that 'golden luckiness' right into your very being!

White Rabbit Creamy Candy 大白兔奶糖

I can still remember very clearly the first time I had one of these little milk candies.  I was still a wee lass, we were in LA Chinatown, buying a bit of chinese groceries, which in those long ago days (eons really!) were hard to come by even in LaLa Land.  My dear 爸爸 spotted them and immediately bought a bag of White Rabbit Creamy Candy as a treat for us girls.  (He was really thrilled to find these!)   

Curious and excited, I carefully untwisted the beautifully colorful waxy wrapping paper with the cute bunny on it.

Haw Flake Candy 山楂餅

You know how there are certain things that you loved when you were a little kid, things that to everyone else was just a 'meh' sort of thing, but to you (and you alone!) this thing was so cool and so special!  Well, the other day I stumbled on a package of Haw Flakes, or 山楂餅, and it was like deja vu right to that little kid state of mind.  Haw Flakes was one of my all time favorite treats when I was a still a wee lass!

Fruit Jelly Candies

One never quite believes how much your own child can "love, love, love" candies, as my little daughter puts it.  With tender mother's concern you scheme that you will specially prepare for your kid all kinds of delicious nibbles and treats that will teach them to love candy less.  Which of course doesn't really work as well as you had hoped cuz your kid still "loves, loves, loves" candies.  

So with that humble pie lesson in mind I have been thinking that I can perhaps make candy that is a bit healthier than the candy you buy.  And so, with my little girl's help, we made these surprisingly delicious real fruit jelly candies.  She really loved the fact that she was making candies!

Hong Kong Hawker Traditional Fruit Candy

Published: 2013-10-16

My 媽媽's been in town and we've been doing the Hong Kong tourist thing with her.  At the ever vibrant Temple Market the other night we discovered a sweet old lady hawker selling her Traditional Chinese Fruit Snacks.  Most of which, I believe, she makes herself.  (Which is a big deal these days when most things seem to be made either by machines or by someone halfway around the world.)  

This was so cool that I had to tell everyone about it. It's so, so hard to find these kind of hong kong hawkers anymore.  Old fashioned, homemade hong kong candy!!  Wow, what a treat!

Chinese Candied Ginger 薑糖

The Chinese love ginger when they cook and rightly so.  A bit of ginger makes everything taste better.  Another favorite use of ginger for the Chinese is to expel the cold and inject warmth in the body.  A traditional chinese medicine concept of keeping a certain balance in your body.   

Another favorite way to reap the benefits of ginger is to eat Chinese Ginger Candy, or 薑糖.  A spicy, hot, and sweet treat that is good for your body. (But don't eat too much if you are a "hot" natured body!  It's better for "cool" body types.)