Yazd sweet · Pulled sugar

Pashmak Recipe (Persian Cotton Candy Floss)

Hard crack sugar. Toast the flour. Pull in rounds.

Recipe by Farwa ZeeshanTested in the NineFoods home kitchen

Pashmak is fine Persian sugar floss from Yazd, made by pulling cooked sugar through toasted flour and butter until it splits into silky threads. It is skilled work: the sugar sets too hard or stays sticky. The fix is cooking the sugar to the hard crack stage, toasting the flour well, and pulling the sugar in a circle while it is still warm and pliable.

Prep20m

Cook30m

Servings8

kcal / serving220

LevelHard

Jump to the method

The 3 laws of pashmak

Why this recipe works

Hard crack sugar

Soft sugar

Correct stage makes threads.

Toast flour

Raw flour

Toasted flour separates the strands.

Pull warm

Cold sugar

Warm sugar stretches.

Shopping and prep list

Ingredients

Servings

Tap items as you gather them · 0 of 0 ready

The NineFoods sugar gauge

Is the sugar ready?

Drop a little into cold water.

Tap a stage to see what to do.

Method · 3 stages

Step by step

Toast flour

Low · 12 min

Cook flour in butter, stirring, until light gold and nutty; add sesame.

Look for: warm toasted flour.

12:00

Sugar

Medium · 15 min

Boil sugar, water and lemon to hard crack. Use the gauge above.
Pour onto a greased tray and cool until pliable.

Look for: pliable sugar.

15:00

Pull

No heat · 20 min

Form a ring, coat with flour and pull and twist into larger rings.
Repeat until fine threads form.

Look for: silky floss.

20:00

Chef's troubleshooter

What went wrong? Pick the symptom

Why

Sugar too cold or hard.

Fix next time

Warm briefly and pull faster.

Why

Under cooked sugar.

Fix next time

Cook to hard crack, 150 C.

Why

Flour not toasted.

Fix next time

Toast until nutty.

Why

Sugar caramelised.

Fix next time

Stop at clear hard crack.

Swap smart

Ingredient roles and substitutes

Ingredient	Job in the dish	Swap with
Butter	Fat	Ghee
Sesame	Flavour	Pistachio powder
Saffron	Colour	Rose essence
Hand pulling	Method	Two people pulling together

After the meal

Serve, store, reheat

Serve with

Tea, or on top of ice cream and cakes.

Store

Airtight, dry, 2 weeks.

Reheat

Not needed.

How we tested this recipe

Tested in a home kitchen, not a studio

Recipe developed and tested by Farwa Zeeshan, who cooks and tests every NineFoods recipe on a regular home stove.

Cooked from start to finish with the exact quantities above for 8 servings, using both the metric and US cup measures.
Every one of the 3 stages was timed at the stove; heat levels and the 'look for' cues are what we saw in the pan.
The doneness check (is the sugar ready) and the troubleshooter come from batches that went wrong, and how we fixed them.
Reheating and storage advice was checked on leftovers, not guessed.

Read our full testing process

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