Food for a Quid: Chinese Toffee Apples

Chinese toffee apples, in all their myriad persuasions, are one of my favourite Chinese street sweeties, and add colour to any hutong as they sit threaded on their long, slender sticks. Whether sold from a bicycle, a cart or a street stall, they’re pretty much guaranteed to brighten your day.

I’ve called them Chinese toffee apples, but they’re traditionally made with the sour, astringent, slightly pulpy pinky-red fruit I’ve seen called both hackberry and Chinese thornapple — if anyone knows the correct English name, if there is one, please help me out, as neither of these are right (picture here).

And this is probably still my favourite variant, though I’ve seen Chinese toffee “apples” made with everything from kumquats to strawberries to kiwi slices, pineapple chunks and even cherry tomatoes, which are treated as a fruit here in China.

It’s the sourness, the astringency and the texture — granular and slightly slushy, like an over-ripe Cox’s Pippin — that does it for me.

As with a toffee apple, the process is simple. Thread the fruit on sticks, dunk in a thick brown sugar syrup, leave to dry, then relish the clash of crunchy sugar and soft fruit, of sweetness and tang, and the lovely jewel-like colours of the fruit glowing through the glaze.

I’ve seen them coated in sesame seeds, but that’s gilding the lily IMHO. This one came from a hutong in Qianmen, Beijing, off the north end of Meishi Jie.

THE VERDICT
Cost: 3 Chinese Yuan (30p)
Flavour: 8/10
Presentation: 9/10

EDIT: Thanks to Fiona for giving me the correct Chinese and English names of these gorgeous fruit. They’re a type of rosehip known as the (Chinese) hawthorn.