The Incredible Stretching Dragon Beard Candy

The other day, a friend gave me a package of something she seemed to have a loss of words for except to say it's like a frosted mini-wheat. The package read "Bamboo Garden Icy-Crispy Dragon Beard Candy." It sounded pretty neat, or at least certainly better than a glorified chunk of cereal. So I put it in the freezer to enhance the icy-crispyness, took it out a few hours later and carefully sunk my teeth into it.

Taste-wise I'd have to say it's decent. Not amazing, but pretty good. It's lightly sweet, fluffy and only lets me down right now cause I'm bloated and craving Pinkberry. (oops, did I just say that?) But check this out: That piece of fuzz ball is actually made of a mixture of sugar and maltose—over 3,000 strands of it. (Believe me, I counted each one.) The filling is made up of finely chopped peanuts, coconut and sesame seeds that fall out once the cocoon is unraveled.

According to the Internet, the 3,000-strand candy is a 2,000-year old technique first introduced in China. The amazing part is how you get that many strands to fall in place. The technique is called "halving" and it's done completely by hand. Here's a video that shows a guy demonstrating the technique with some noodles. Check it out. You'll be dumbfounded: