Dalgona or Korean sponge candy is a fun Korean street food that will bring out the kid in you!! or at least in my husband… 🙂 With a sweet caramel flavor and a lightly crunchy but also melt-in-your-mouth texture, this is my husband’s childhood favorite. Lately, it’s gained popularity due to this candy appearing in Netflix’s Squid Game.
What is Dalgona Candy?
Dalgona is a Korean candy that was sold in every neighborhood street when my husband and I were kids in Korea. Until now, I thought Dalgona was kind of a unique candy from Korea but then I thought I might have tasted something similar in the US… Well, after some research, I learned that similar candies exist all throughout the world! This wonderful candy goes by many different names: Sponge Candy (NY, PA..), Cinder Toffee (Britain), Angel Food Candy(Wisconsin), Sea Foam(California, Maine..), Honeycomb Toffee (South Africa), karume-yaki (Japan) and more. What do you call this candy? I would love to hear the name you are familiar with!
In Korea, Dalgona (달고나) and Ppopgi (뽑기) are two most common names but it has other names based on each region and there’s one in particular that I found hilarious – are you ready??
Ttong-gwaja (Poop cookie!!!!). 😂.😜 HAHAHA…
Honestly, as I was taking pictures while my husband was making the candy, there were a couple shots that I thought that exactly. I mean, I wasn’t going to share this but…I’ll show a small picture of it at the bottom of this post.
‘Oh dear.. it kinda looks like somethin’… oh, it’s probably just me….’
‘Get your mind out of the toilet! JinJoo!’ is what I told myself. 😂 😂
Well, but what do you know?? I was worried that it might look like that in my photo afterwards as I was taking the photo but I never imagined that it would be called that!!! Sometimes, Koreans can be so blunt and direct…
Difference between Dalgona vs Ppopgi
Dalgona
This name comes from the word Dalgoona (달구나) which means it’s sweet. Dalgona is believed to have appeared in the 60’s in Busan. Originally it was made with glucose. Blocks of glucose was melted in a ladle on top of the fire. Once it’s fully melted, baking soda is added to produce this wonderfully sweet and spongy candy.
Ppopgi
This name comes from the world Ppopda (뽑다), which means ‘pick or choose’. For some reason, this name has disappeared around the 80’s and now is not much used anymore. For my husband and I, this is the only name we grew up knowing. Ppopgi is made the same way as Dalgona but sugar is melted instead of glucose.
Unlike glucose, melted sugar does not stick to metal and thus can be spread with a metal plate and then different molds are used to make an indentation. The deal offered by the candy man to the kids then is that if they succeeded in breaking off the outer parts without breaking the shape and keeping it whole, they can either get another candy or get some small toy for free!
Personally, I have not had a chance to do this because my mom never allowed me to go near any street vendors (and I faithfully followed her rules) but my husband was able to sneak visits to the Ppopgi stand every chance he could get.
So, thanks to my husband, I am able to bring this to you! My husband’s fond memories of this candy is how he used to always stop by the candy stand on his way home from his piano lessons. He said he even lied to his piano teacher (don’t worry, she was his aunt so it’s all in the family 😝) a couple times, telling her he needed money for the bus fare home. Obviously, the bus fare ended up in the pocket of the Ppopgi Ahjussi (candy man).. l0l.
Well, thanks to that, my husband is the expert in our house when it comes to this Korean honeycomb toffee and his trick to breaking off the shape perfectly is to use needles or pins to chip away at the shape, one poke at a time. And it looks like lately (Sept 2021) it’s now a widely known game – thanks to Netflix. As it appears in an episode in Squid Game where those who don’t succeed in cutting out the shape perfectly will face some dire consequences.
Dalgona Kit
A thank you also to my sister-in-law who helped me buy the Dalgona kit from Korea. BTW, I just found out that this is actually available on Amazon in the US!! It wasn’t there before when I asked her to buy it for me which was I think almost 2 years ago…
Well, I hope you can enjoy Dalgona with your children or just become kids yourselves, like we did 😝. It would be a fun activity for the whole family to celebrate your Korean New Year!
Ingredients
Servings: 1 Cooking Time: 5 min Difficulty: Moderate
Ingredients
- 1 Tbs sugar
- 1 pinch baking soda
- 1 tsp vegetable oil
- Equipment/Tools
- 1 ladle or large spoon
- 1 metal chopstick or a candy stick
- 1 small silicon spatula or spoon for scraping
- 1 flat plate or smooth metal or stone surface
- dalgona mold or cookie cutter molds (optional)
Instructions
- Coat a plate or a metal or stone surface with a bit of vegetable oil. Coat oil on a hotteok press or any ceramic or metal plate/pan that you can use to press the melted sugar. Have these two items and a silicon spatula ready next to your stove.
- Add 1 Tbs sugar in a ladle or large spoon.
Sugar in Spoon for Dalgona (Korean Honeycomb Toffee) – smily face by my husband 🙂 
Melting Sugar for Dalgona - Hold the ladle or spoon on top of the stove at medium-low heat and melt sugar for about 3-4 min until it becomes liquid and is looking semi-transparent.
Dalgona Sugar Melted for Sponge Candy Avoid burning by stirring constantly with a chopstick while it melts and take it away from the heat anytime it starts to smoke. Lower the heat if necessary.
- Once it has turned into sugar syrup, add a pinch (or 3 dips with the end of the chopstick – see video) of backing soda to syrup.
Adding Baking Soda for Dalgona - Immediately take the ladle off the heat and mix soda with the syrup. Stir well.
Dalgona melted sugar soda - Move the ladle one more time back on the stove and heat it up for just about 4-5 seconds, until the sugar mixture starts to puff up. Don’t wait too long, then you are most likely going to burn it. If you see dark brown color then you kinda burnt it.
- Transfer sugar+soda mixture onto greased plate or surface. Use a spatula to scrape it off from the ladle.
Dalgona pouring from ladle Immediately press the melted sugar mixture down to make a thin disc like candy.
Pressing Dalgona with a Hotteok press Press for 3 seconds or so and then before it fully hardens, press your mold on the candy.
Heart shape mold for Dalgona Korean Candy Here is a close up of a heart shape mold. Press this into the candy while taking care not to press so hard that the mold cuts through the candy.
Dalgona pressed with mold - Let it cool and there you go!
Dalgona - Korean Sugar Sponge Candy Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 pinch baking soda
- 1 tsp vegetable oil
Equipment/Tools
- 1 ladle or large spoon
- 1 metal chopstick or a candy stick
- 1 small silicon spatula or spoon for scraping
- 1 flat plate or smooth metal or stone surface
- dalgona mold or cookie cutter molds (optional)
Instructions
- Coat a plate or a metal or stone surface with a bit of vegetable oil. Coat oil on a hotteok press or any ceramic or metal plate/pan that you can use to press the melted sugar. Have these two items and a silicon spatula ready next to your stove.
- Add 1 Tbs sugar in a ladle or large spoon.
- Hold the ladle or spoon on top of the stove at medium-low heat and melt sugar for about 3-4 min until it becomes liquid and is transparent. Avoid burning by stirring constantly with a chopstick while it melts and take it away from the heat anytime it starts to smoke. Lower the heat if necessary.
- Once it has turned into sugar syrup, add a pinch (or 3 dips with the end of the chopstick - see video) of backing soda to syrup.
- Immediately take the ladle off the heat and mix soda with the syrup.
- Move the ladle one more time back on top of the heat and heat it up for just about 4-5 seconds, until the sugar mixture starts to puff up. Don't wait until it puffs up fully, then you are most likely going to burn it.
- Transfer sugar+soda mixture onto greased plate or surface. Immediately press it down to make a thin disc like candy. Press for 3 seconds or so and then before it fully hardens, press your mold on the candy - not so hard that the shape will be cut out.
- Let it cool and then you have a fun Korean Dalgona Sugar Sponge Candy!
Tips & Notes:
- The hardest part about making this candy is the pressing down and making indentation with the mold. You don't NEED to do that if you just want to enjoy the taste only. It will just be whatever shape you leave it.
Nutrition Information:
Tips for Making Perfect Dalgona
- The hardest part about making this candy is the pressing down and making indentation with the mold. You don’t NEED to do that if you just want to enjoy the taste only. It will just be whatever shape you leave it. And sometimes it can look like something else..remind you of something??
Dalgona Ppopgi Sponge Candy or Poop candy?? - To make into a lollipop kind of candy, place a wooden stick in the plate and pour the candy onto the stick.
- Instead of coating the plate with oil, you can also sprinkle some sugar instead.
Well, hope you enjoyed seeing how my husband makes this wonderful Sea Foam or Sponge Candy – Korean style!
Here is my How to make Dalgona video if you want to see it in action!
Try My Dalgona Coffee Recipe
If you love the flavor of Dalgona, try making some Dalgona Coffee with this recipe. Coffee and sugar is whipped until it’s foamy and it has that slight burnt sugar taste of Dalgona. Also, you can top it with the candy to make it even more delicious!
This sounds like a great new treat for a family holiday get together. Can they be made in advance? What is the best way to store them and how long can they be stored?
It really is!! So much fun. They can be made in advance but how long and well they keep depends on the humidity and temperature. If you can keep it in a dry and cool place – it should be good for a couple days at least. If you wrap it up like a lollipop, it should last a bit longer even. Make the indentation with cookie cutters and have your family members take the ‘break out the shape without breaking it’ challenge!! Cheers!!
What am I doing wrong? I bought the kit from Amazon and I keep trying them but when I press on it with a greased flat ladle thing, it keeps sticking to it. The metal plate and the thing to push on are both greased well. It actually sticks to the flat ladle and the flat metal plate that it came with. I’ve tried 4 times. 3 times it stuck to it. 1 time it didn’t but it lifted the flat shape into half and i had to quickly push it back down.
Hmm.. it can sometimes stick but most of the time it doesn’t when you oil it sufficiently. One thing you can try is to slide the flat ladle off to the side, instead of lifting off and also don’t immediately lift the flat ladle but let it rest for few seconds before taking it off. Hope that helps.
I’ve tried this at a cafe in Seoul called Cafe Cha – they put crushed dalgona honeycomb on top of drinks like milk tea. Yum!
That sounds amazing!! I love dalgona candy anywhere – love the crunch!
In New Zealand it’s called hokey pokey which is also the name of one of our favourite icecream flavours. The icecream is vanilla flavour and has little balls of hokey pokey in it. No one knows how the balls stay crunchy in the icecream.
Yes, that’s right!! I heard about the hokey pokey.. thanks for sharing the info! Hokey pokey in ice cream sounds heavenly!!
I don’t have a metal ladle or spoon big enough, can I just use a small pot?
Hmm.. it may be hard to get it out once you are done. If you do a larger amount, the pot may work. How about a frying pan? Do you have a small frying pan? That may be better. Anyway, good luck!
Can we use baking powder instead of using baking soda ?
I am afraid it won’t be the same. It will not get airy/spongy and will be hard. Good luck!