Peach Gum With Lychee

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A light and beautiful dessert made from peach gum / peach resin and lychee. Sweetened with a touch of honey. Wonderful served hot or chilled.

Have you had peach gum / peach resin before? It's a popular ingredient for Chinese desserts. It is also used in a lot of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) cooking.

Once cooked, it has this great jelly-like texture with a faint sweetness.

We keep a jar of peach gum at home and use it to make many desserts. There are many peach gum recipes out there, and one of the easiest (and tastiest) is peach gum with lychee.

This dessert is made of slowly simmered peach gum, honey, and lychee (fresh or canned). Simple, straightforward, and delicious.

What Is Peach Gum?

Peach gum is the resin from peach trees. Neat, right?

They look like little translucent gems or pebbles and are already dried by the time they're picked off the tree.

Peach gum goes by several names:

Peach Gum
Peach Resin
Peach Blossom Tears

Before cooking with peach gum, you must rehydrate them in water overnight. Then you must clean it.

How to clean peach gum? Just pick out the impurities / tiny black bits before cooking the peach gum.

Fully cooked peach gum has a signature texture that's a magical combination of bouncy, jelly, and soft. It's so good! It's delicately sweet, hinting of peach.

It's believed to be high in collagen and very good for your skin.

*Soaking peach gum in a bowl of water to rehydrate.*

Why This Recipe Works

Longan is a traditional pairing for peach gum. But because we are in Hawaii and lychee (both fresh and canned) is so popular, we make this dessert more frequently with lychee!

The peach gum is slowly simmered until it's cooked through and becomes soft and jelly-like. If you're a fan of jellies, you will go crazy for this dessert and peach gum in general ^_^

To highlight the peachy flavor, we add a little honey.

Peach and lychee taste super together, so we add lychee for texture and flavor contrast. Just three ingredients, keeping it simple.

Ingredients

Peach gum / peach resin - Available online or in Chinese markets.
Honey - We love local Hawaiian honey.
Canned lychee - Canned lychee is most common, but you can also use fresh lychee if available / in season.

Step by Step Directions

Ready to get cooking? ^_^

First we'll have to prepare the peach gum:

Soak the peach gum in water overnight. The peach gum will expand (almost triple in size) and soften.

Drain and rinse the peach gum. Pick out all the black bits attached to the peach gum. Rinse again with water a few more times to clean. Drain and set aside.

Now we start the actual cooking:

In a pot, bring 6 cups of water to a boil. Slide in the cleaned peach gum. Bring it back to a boil and then turn heat down to low.

Let simmer with the cover on for 45-60 minutes until the peach gum is fully cooked through (it should be very soft and jelly-like).

Tip: Peach gum is forgivable in terms of cooking time (ok if you go over 10-15 minutes), but you don't want to super overcook peach gum because it can turn from beautiful jelly to completely melted.

Stir in the honey. Feel free to use more or less honey than the recipe calls for. Levels of preferred sweetness, when it comes to desserts like this, is a very personal thing.

Gently stir in the can of lychee (along with the syrup in the can).

Tip: If it is lychee season we love to use fresh lychee (and add more honey). For the rest of the year, canned lychee works perfectly.

Simmer for another 5 minutes. Spoon into individual dessert bowls and serve. Enjoy hot or cold ^_^

FAQs and Tips

How long does this dessert keep?

3-4 days in the refrigerator, in a sealed container.

How to serve this dessert?

You can serve it chilled, straight from the refrigerator. Or you can serve it hot, right after you finish cooking (to reheat the dessert, just microwave in 30 second increments until warmed through).

What are other types of "sweet soup" desserts?

Sweet soups is a category of desserts that's literally sweet. soups. They're not quite puddings or custards, but a category of their own.

Sweet soups are not as popular in western culture, but it is huge in Asian cultures...and thus Hawaii ^_^

These are a few other favorite sweet soups:
- Banana Tapioca (Che Chuoi)
- Almond Tofu
- Strawberry-Haupia Agar Agar
- Vietnamese Mung Bean Dessert (Che Dau Xanh)
- Purple Sweet Potato Tapioca

These desserts are similar to sweet soups. They don't exactly fall into the same category, but are quite delicious:
- Breadfruit (Ulu) With Coconut Milk
- Taro (Kalo) With Coconut Milk

What modifications can I make?

You can skip the lychee entirely. For a super simple dessert, just cook the peach gum and sweeten with honey.

Or replace the lychee with longan (we typically use dried longan).

You can add snow fungus / white fungus for more texture contrast.