Flaky Sesame Candy 芝麻酥糖
Flaky Sesame Candy is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Flaky Sesame Candy (芝麻酥糖) is a hand-pulled sweet of white sesame and sugar from Binzhou (滨州), Shandong. Dazhong Net calls it a traditional Binzhou folk food and one of Shandong's well-known products. The sugar is hand-pulled into a twist of fine threads, and the finished candy is pale yellow, light, dry and crisp.
How it is made
Dazhong Net lists the steps as choosing the sesame, rubbing off the husks, roasting, crushing, boiling the sugar, pulling it into strips, drawing it into threads and packing. The sesame is roasted in a large iron wok, husked by pounding with a wooden pole, and ground to a powder under a roller; the sugar is boiled in a small iron wok. The sugar temperature changes with the season, over 100 degrees in winter and 150 to 180 degrees in summer. Each piece is shaped as a twist of 16 turns holding more than 2,600 sugar threads, each as fine as silver wire.
Besides white sesame and white sugar, the recipe listed by Dazhong Net takes sesame oil, maltose syrup, alum, sweetened osmanthus, sweetened hawthorn, spices and monosodium glutamate. Mid-Autumn and Qingming are named as the best times of year to make it.
Where it comes from
Dazhong Net describes the Binzhou candy as a family craft of Chang Yunluan (常云鸾) of the Changjia (常家) residents' community in Binzhou's Bincheng District (滨城区). In the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty, Chang Liting (常立亭) fled famine to Yangliuqing (杨柳青) in Tianjin and learned the craft from an old sweet-maker there, then brought it back to Binzhou and ran a household workshop known as the Chang Family Sugar Shop (常家糖坊). The skill passed to his son Chang Baoqing (常宝庆) and then to his grandson Chang Yunluan, who took up the work again after retiring in 2004 and has passed it to his sons. Dazhong Net counted three sesame-candy workshops in Binzhou at the time of writing.
According to Senior Life Daily, carried by iqilu.com, a single original flavour has grown into four: pineapple, tangerine, osmanthus and hawthorn.
Flavour and texture
Dazhong Net describes the candy as pale yellow, fluffy and dry, with a strong sesame aroma, crisp and fragrant-sweet without being cloying. It is a favoured gift when visiting relatives and friends.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.