If you haven’t heard of Crystal Candy (Kohakutou) before, it’s basically like a thick jelly sweet with a crunchy outer shell.

We first discovered it thanks to watching ASMR videos (the ones of people eating are NOT my favourite but the twins love watching Americans crunching through pretty colourful chunks of sugar)!

Kohakutou is a traditional Asian sweet, also known as Amber Sugar. It’s vegetarian and vegan (the agar-agar is derived from seaweed) and gluten-free and can be made in all sorts of shapes, colours and flavours. It’s usually crystal or gem shaped, hence the name Crystal Candy. They make a lovely gift.

It’s quite hard to find in the UK, although I did invest in some last Christmas from Etsy to surprise them but it was pretty pricey! This year, I decided to make my own. I found a couple of recipes online and ended up combining two of them. One by Silky Gem Crystal Candy in the USA and one by Sugar Geek Show. You can find my version below.

Ingredients:

Equipment:

Method:

Make your jellies:

• Pour the water into a saucepan and sprinkle over the agar-agar powder. Stir and leave for 5 minutes to soak up the water.
• Slowly warm the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the agar-agar dissolves completely. Once dissolved, bring to the boil, pour in the sugar and keep whisking until it’s fully incorporated. Simmer for around 5 minutes, until you have a thick syrup.
• Decide how many flavours/colours you’d like to create and separate into different bowls before adding a couple of drops of your chosen colourings and flavourings to each bowl, stir to combine. (For my first ones I used passionfruit with purple, blueberry with blue, cherry with red and lemon with yellow.)
• Pour into your lightly oiled moulds or use a heat proof dish and place in the fridge to set for 1-2 hours.

Time to Crystalise!

• Once set, gently remove the jellies from your moulds. If using a container, run a knife around the edge to remove the slab and cut into gem shapes on a chopping board.
• Place your sweets on a tray lined with baking parchment and place in a dark place to allow the crystallisation to happen over a few days. Turn every other day to ensure each side starts to harden.
• Once your Kohakutou has developed a nice crunchy crust and is no longer sticky, you can store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month. We found they developed a thicker crust as they dried out more over the next couple of weeks – the twins preferred this so we will make it with more time to crystallise in future.

I invested in some moulds as I’m sure the kids will be getting me to make this again once they know about it! I have some gem and crystal shard shapes as well as a few flowers and hearts. (And some snowflakes ready for Christmas too!)

Crystal Candy Making Top Tips:

The process was easier than I thought, although I did make them with only a week to go before the twins’ birthday so I was stressing when the crystallisation wasn’t happening very quickly (or at all on some of them).

I did some research and it turns out they need to be somewhere warm and well ventilated but I’d hidden them in a cold room where the kids wouldn’t find them. After some Googling, I found out that a dehydrator can speed things up but I don’t have one. BUT, an oven can do the job too – on a low heat with the door ajar. And it worked! Phew!!

I popped them in this cute treasure chest I found online and hid them in a big box, surrounded by blue tissue paper and fairy lights to look like the ocean.

The kids were so excited! It was the perfect surprise and when I told them I made it they were delighted! They can’t wait for me to show them how and play with different flavours. I haven’t told them that I already bought snowflake moulds to surprise them at Christmas. I think it might have to be one of our ADVENT-ures this year!

Let me know if you’re going to give it a go!