In my country, this green papaya sweet is common to prepare and eat on Christmas and New Year holidays. It’s a preparation with dedication because it consists of several steps that will make it a very tasty sweet.
The first thing to get is a papaya that is green. Several longitudinal cuts must be made for her to distill her latex for a day and both edges are cut too.
The next day the green skin of the papaya is peeled and the seeds must also be cut inside. Then once the pieces of papaya are cut, approximately 10 cm long by 5 cm wide, but this width and size is according to what the person likes to do.
The papaya pieces are placed in water and a tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate is added, leave it for approximately 5 hours. Then they are washed again and placed in a pot with half a liter of water. Boil for 30 minutes. Some people dump this water and add a new one to continue cooking, I don’t throw it away and continue cooking with the same water over moderate heat and add 2 cups of sugar. In addition to adding 3 sticks of cinnamon and some cloves.
Once it has 2 hours of cooking over moderate heat, I add 250 grams of panela, papelón or piloncillo and I let this sweet thicken.
Once this sweet, thick like syrup, that was formed with the sugar and the piloncillo is already thick enough, remove it from the heat. It’s left to rest and then stored in previously boiled glass containers. This is how they are kept in the fridge until they’re ready for consumption.
And this is the way I prepare my traditional papaya candy. I put it in small glass containers and gift them along with cookies and Christmas nog to my closest friends.
This is a new kind of sweets. I think piloncillo is like a hard sugar concentrate. Is it?