Dragon’s Beard Candy

I’ve been eating dragon’s beard candy for as long as I can remember. I loved watching the street vendors in Hong Kong pull and stretch a lump of sugar until it turned into 16,384 strands of silky white threads that got filled with finely chopped peanuts, sugar, and desiccated coconut before getting rolled into a delicate cocoon. It was reportedly invented by the chef to a Chinese emperor during the Han Dynasty, who after eating it got the strands stuck all over his face, resembling a dragon