- Nicola
Mid-Autumn Festival Series: Homemade Golden Syrup – 黄金糖浆
Updated: Apr 15, 2020
On to the next one… This is the 2nd part of the Traditional Mooncakes leading up to our final post in the Mid-Autumn Festival Series.
After reading several bloggers, and researching different recipes, Golden Syrup is essential to the mooncake ingredients, so I proceeded over to wikipedia to look up Golden Syrup.
Golden syrup is a inverted sugar syrup that has a beautiful amber colour. Wikipedia describes Golden syrup as a inverted sugar, it is a mixture of glucose and fructose. When inverted sugar is added to products, these products are more likely to retain moisture and also are less prone to crystallize. Often, honey is used as a substitute for golden syrup because it is also a mixture of glucose and fructose, giving it similar properties to golden syrup.
Golden syrups is actually quite easy to make and requires very little ingredients, just sugar, liquid, and an acid.
Mid-Autumn Festival related posts:
Homemade Lotus Seed Paste Rainbow Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes
Snow Skin Coconut Custard Mooncakes
Snow Skin Taro Mooncakes made with Fried Glutinous Rice Flour
Taro Root Filling for Mooncakes or other yum pastries
Traditional Lotus Seed Paste Mooncakes
Homemade Golden Syrup – 黄金糖浆
Makes 1 cup Ingredients:
335 grams (1 1/2 cup) granulated sugar 250 ml (1 cup) water Quarter a lemon – Cut into big pieces or 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Sterile Jar
Notes before you start: *The citric acid prevents crystallization of the sugar *The syrup will appear liquid when hot, but will thicken when cooled. *Do not touch the sugar with bare hands!!!
Directions:
Prepare a container of water and a silicone brush, this will be needed to brush away any sugar that forms on the side of the pot and avoid crystallization.
Add about 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup of water to a large saucepan.
Swirl the saucepan over medium-high heat until the mixture begins to boil.
After a few minutes, the sugar will turn amber.
Lower the heat and allow to simmer until the sugar turns deep amber. This will take about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring to boil the remaining 3/4 cup of water in another pot.
Once the sugar is caramelized, add the hot boiling water gradually to the sugar mixture. *Be careful as it could splatter.
The sugar may harden, stir until the sugar dissolves.
Next add the remaining sugar.
Add the lemon juice or lemon chunks to the sugar mixture, and bring to a boil. The citric acid will stop the sugar from crystallizing.
When it starts to boil, reduce the heat to low and allow to simmer until it reaches a soft ball stage of 230 degrees F t(about 30 minutes)
If you used lemon chunks, pour the liquid through a sieve into the container.
The golden syrup is ready to use after 24 hours after it has cooled and thickened. It is even better if you wait longer, as the syrup matures, it will become more fragrant and flavourful.