Chan Pei Mui 陳皮梅 (Chinese Preserved Plum Candy) Recipes?

[mudbug]

Anyone have a recipe for this?

 

They are getting harder to find in Asian groceries and when I do, they often have sucralose, erythritol, aspartame or other artificial sweetener that makes them distasteful. The main ingredients are licorice, mandarin peel, salt and sugar. Does anyone have any recipes they can source from China? Links, thoughts?

 

It's my all time favorite preserved fruit to eat. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Edited August 3 by mudbug (log)

[liuzhou]

陳皮梅 literally translates as 'orange / tangerine peel plum'. 'Chan Pei Mui' is the Americanized Cantonese; in the much more common Mandarin it is 'chén pí méi'. 陳皮梅 is traditional Chinese as used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and much of the Chinese diaspora but in Simplified Chinese used in Mainland China (i.e. by 95% of the population) they are 陈皮梅. Searches under Simplified Chinese characters or the Mandarin pronunciation or other names may give more results. I don't have access to Google at the moment so can't check. A search on Baidu, China's main search engine produced plenty of information in Chinese (mostly advertisements) but no recipes that I could see in the first ten pages of results.

 

That said, I've never heard of anyone making them at home here. Every corner shop has them.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Edited August 3 by liuzhou (log)

[mudbug]

Thank you. I'm not in Hong Kong and this is extremely challenging for me to find at any Asian grocery I go to. When I am lucky enough to find any, they have aspartame or sucralose, or other artificial sweetener. I'm looking or a brand that only uses sugar.

 

Seems strange that this is so well loved yet there are no home recipes? Does anyone have access to Chinese internet and can post some recipes here?

[FauxPas]

3 hours ago, mudbug said:

Seems strange that this is so well loved yet there are no home recipes?

 

I did a search and found this recipe, but does it look like the right thing?

 

https://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2011/02/chan-pei-mui-chinese-fruit-candy.html

Edited August 3 by FauxPas (log)

[mudbug]

FauxPas,

 

Thank you. I found that recipe about a month ago. It's close, but not quite the same result. If you read the post, you'll find that they could not find an original recipe either.

 

They are also cutting the fruit up. I have whole fruit in my orchard and want to make it with the whole fruit in tact, which is also the form of the product in the photo of the original post.

 

With such a popular snack, it is strange that there are not tried and true home recipes floating around.

Edited August 3 by mudbug (log)

[Kerry Beal]

So it's a whole candied plum flavoured with liquorice and mandarin peel - with a bit of salt?

 

I'd probably start with this recipe, add some liquorice block powder, dried mandarin peel and salt and of course leave out the cinnamon and cloves. 

 

Most candied fruit recipes are pretty similar and this one is specifically for plums so will address some of the issues inherent to candying that fruit.