You can recognize a country by the food they serve. Everybody knows Belgian chocolate, but what about the cuberdon candy. For many Belgians a beloved childhood taste, but unknown outside our frontiers. The recipe, that dates back to the 19th century, is a well kept secret only known by a handful of confisiers (aka candy makers). You can recognize a classic cuberdon as a violet collared sugar cone containing a thick raspberry syrup.
How does it get that way? Well we know that cuberdons are hand-made with carefully selected ingredients, among those are gum arabic and raspberry aroma. All of these go into a copper pot to cook, the obtained mixture is poured into conical forms to be dried in an oven during five to six days. This kicks in the crystallization process of the outer layer, while the core stays liquid. The restricted durability of fresh cuberdon (three weeks) is caused by the sugarization of the core. One of the main reasons that this sugar-rush-giving candy is not exported!
Biting off the top and sucking out the syrup is the classic way to devour a cuberdon, resulting in a volcanic explosion of liquid raspberry-scented sugar. Today you can get more than 25 different perfumes, going from apple to liquorice. All this sweetness was almost lost in oblivion as the second world war knew a lack of gum arabic import. But some passionated confisiers, that remembered the unwritten recipe, restarted production in 1946. Today the cuberdon entered the culinary world of star restaurants. The cuberdon inspired desserts of Roger Van Damme are praised by foodie idols such as Ferran Adria of El Bulli.
But cuberdons stay a people’s candy. You don’t have to visit a fancy restaurant to try them out, instead you can buy them at your local market our quality candy shop. So hop on a train, take that plane and enjoy your Belgian cuberdon!
This post via http://www.ilovebelgium.be/
