I think I've ragged on Chinese sweets and desserts in general before -- I just don't like 'em. They're just not the teeth-rotting, gristy sugar-crunching sweet bombs that American cakes and candies are.
To me, the wrong things have been made sweet. Take sickly sweet bean paste, which you can find as a filling of all kinds of things, including baozi and zongzi. Beans! Save for my slushy popsicle, which was gloriously mild, I don't think beans should ever be sweet. I hate the sweet red bean dessert soup, too.
I bought peanut brittle-esque candy on the street the other day, freshly hacked from its log. This candy goes the other way -- it looks like it should be sweeter than it is. (It's the second-from-bottom bin in the photo).
Its American cousin would by brittle but buttery, with a sickly sweet caramel-like adhesive keeping together the salty peanut bits. Here, none of that comes in to play. The peanuts are neither roasted nor salted; the filling is not especially sweet and not at all caramel -- it's mostly just "sticky peanuts".
That being said, I liked this candy-- it's more snack-like than dessert like. However, I don't have enough a sweet tooth to finish the half jin I bought before it goes stale. Too bad.
FYI, the black candy contains sesame, which I didn't try. The upper-most bin (yellowish candy) contained a sweet puffed rice candy that tasted remarkably like American breakfast cereal. My friend bought some and we all agreed it was the big winner.
Posted by Astrid at October 26, 2004 11:05 AM