Where does Yaozhou snowflake candy belong?

Yaozhou snowflake candy is a specialty of Yaozhou District, Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province. Yaozhou snowflake sugar, commonly known as "slag sugar", has been praised by people for a hundred years and is the first of the four sugars in Guanzhong. It is sweet and crisp, with unique flavor, and has the effects of invigorating stomach, moistening intestines, relieving cough and resolving phlegm.

Yaozhou snowflake candy, commonly known as "slag candy", is a famous traditional specialty in Yaozhou, which is well-known all over the world. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it has been a tribute to the imperial court for hundreds of years.

Snowflake sugar has been praised by people for a hundred years, and it is the first of the four major sugars in Guanzhong (Xianyang amber sugar, Sanyuan Polygonum flower sugar, Fuping Guo Qiong sugar and Yaozhou snowflake sugar). It is sweet and crisp, with unique flavor, and has the effects of invigorating stomach, moistening intestines, relieving cough and resolving phlegm. During the Republic of China, there was a folk song: "Around Yaozhou City, snowflake candy is delicious. It can strengthen the stomach, moisten the intestines, and has a strong antitussive and expectorant effect. If you have money, don't buy anything. Buy snowflake candy first. " Nowadays, elderly Yaozhou people can recite snowflake candy fluently from time to time.

Snowflake candy is a seasonal food and is sold all over the street in winter. It is a delicious product for Yaozhou people to visit relatives and friends around the Spring Festival and give gifts to relatives and friends in the New Year. Yaozhou people who work in other places, every Spring Festival, the first thing they think of is the snowflake candy in their hometown. Even if I can't go home for reunion during the Spring Festival, I can comfort my homesickness as long as I can eat a snowflake candy sent by my relatives and friends.

The formation of snowflake sugar has a long history. According to relevant historical records, snowflake candy was famous at least in the Ming Dynasty (1368 Ming Dynasty). As we know, every year on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, the kitchen god is sacrificed, and this custom is still continuing. Snowflake candy is the earliest kitchen candy. Historically, the custom of offering sacrifices to kitchen stoves has existed since the Qin Dynasty (22 BC1year, about 223 BC1year). Of course, there are many sacrifices, and kitchen candy is an essential main sacrifice for Yaozhou people to sacrifice the kitchen god. The characteristic of kitchen candy is sweet and sticky, which means sticking kitchen candy on the mouth of kitchen god to be "god". Of course, this is formed by history. Anyway, this kind of stove candy has profound cultural connotation, which means auspiciousness, happiness and beauty, and carries people's hopes and longings. Because of this, for more than two thousand years, people have always attached great importance to kitchen candy and devoted themselves to processing and improving it. Yaozhou snowflake candy was produced in the development of more than two thousand years, and it has gone through three stages: kitchen candy, sesame candy and snowflake candy. Some people add sesame seeds to kitchen candy to make "sesame candy" and empty barrel-shaped "roller" to facilitate people's snack sales. On the basis of sesame sugar, it was further processed and improved to form snowflake sugar, which is sweet and crisp now.

In the Qing Dynasty (starting from 1644), there were dozens of workshops inside and outside Yaozhou City, which were integrated with vinegar workshops due to raw materials and technical reasons. Before and after liberation, there were more than ten sugar factories, such as Hengmaosheng, Zhongshengyi, Fushenghe and Dingyigong, with similar scale. The reason why Yaozhou snowflake candy is famous is not the raw material, nor the soil and water, but the production process, which is the wisdom crystallization of the hard-working and intelligent Yaozhou people's coarse grains.

The main raw materials of snowflake candy are: millet, sesame and barley malt. In recent years, spices such as walnut kernel, osmanthus fragrans, moss, sherbet and essence have been added to make the taste more sweet and delicious and the color more gorgeous. Making snowflake candy is a coolie. Cooking sugar is fast and laborious. The lean young man is sweating after working for a while, no matter whether the sugar is white or not, one is to master the cooking temperature, and the other is to pull the plate. Crispness depends on the sugar cutter. You still need to get up early and stay up late to process, and the stove keeps burning. The process of making snowflake candy is to soak millet thoroughly in water, steam it in a cage, mix it with ground barley malt for fermentation, then put it in a gapped vat, pour boiling water to pour out the rice juice, pour it into a pot and cook it with charcoal fire. After boiling, take it out and tear it into sugar embryos, then put it in a pot and smoke it with charcoal, then add the fried and peeled sesame seeds and stir them evenly, roll them into pieces and cut them into strips. Finally, cut the candy into pieces with a certain width, which is as thin as paper and tastes sweet and crisp. It is a real natural green food, with no additives, natural raw materials and pure manual processing.

At present, there are still more than a dozen sugar factories in Yaozhou, basically continuing the traditional business model. A sugar factory, with eight or nine workers, started working in the dark and ended after sunset. However, it can only process 100 kg of finished products every day. A dozen workshops have been busy all winter, but they still can't meet the demand of Yaozhou market.

There are different opinions about the origin of the name of snowflake candy, especially in the streets. Some people say that the production and listing of snowflake candy occurred in the dead of winter when snowflakes were flying; Some people say: because candy is white and bright, when you eat snowflake candy, you break it with your hands, or when you bite candy with your teeth, sugar residue falls one after another, just like snowflakes flying; Others say that refined snowflake candy is as white as snow, hence the name. To make it clear whether this naming is appropriate, accurate and wonderful, we have to go back to the process of frying sugar. When the sugar is fried, it is constantly heated, the water is constantly evaporated, and the sugar paste is getting thicker and thicker. In order to prevent the sugar from burning, it needs to be stirred constantly. Three to five minutes before the sugar is about to become an embryo, the sugar juice keeps forming bubbles as big as a fist, as big as a bowl, or even bigger, and keeps bursting. Its fragments are as thin as cicadas' wings and like snowflakes, constantly filling, gradually spreading and flying over the pot. Probably a more accurate name.

In winter, it snows heavily outside, and indoor family members sit around the stove, and a pot of tea sizzles on the stove. At this time, the kind-looking white-haired grandmother gave her children and grandchildren pieces of snowflake candy. Everyone ate and chatted, feeling very happy, peaceful and happy.

Snowflake candy is famous for its unique flavor, therapeutic effect and exquisite production technology, and it is integrated with the cultural symbols of Yaozhou, becoming the pride of Yaozhou people. Unfortunately, snowflake candy was made around the cold Spring Festival, and it was hot and sticky.

In June, 2009, the traditional production technology Yaozhou snowflake candy was recognized as the second batch of intangible cultural heritage projects in Tongchuan. We hope that snowflake candy, an intangible cultural heritage project, can further improve its innovation and add new raw materials after rescue and excavation, so that it can be changed from seasonal food to perennial food and can be listed all year round to meet people's constant needs and better prosper the material life of the broad masses.