How to Make Dalgona Candy, The Squid Game Famous Cookies (With Video!)

With the buzz surrounding the highly anticipated second season of Squid Game, the show's impact continues to ripple far beyond the screen. Among the most memorable elements from the first season was the nerve-wracking dalgona challenge, which turned a simple Korean street treat into a global sensation.

Originally a nostalgic childhood snack, dalgona biscuits became a viral trend after the show's release, with millions attempting the delicate sugar-carving task at home. As the series makes its comeback, so too does the fascination with these sweet, caramelized treats—only this time, without the life-or-death stakes.

What is Dalgona Candy?

Dalgona, a term that in Korean simply means "it's sweet", are decidedly crumbly, thin biscuits, made only with caramelized sugar and baking soda, on which a shape is impressed (in the series circle, star, triangle and umbrella) with a cutter. The unfortunate players in the game are forced to extract the respective figure without breaking the biscuit, under penalty of immediate execution.

In real life, fortunately, dalgona is associated with much happier and sweeter memories. The opposite is impossible, after all, considering the amount of sugar present.

Particularly popular in the 70s and 80s of the last century, in the last two decades almost all traces of them had been lost, until with Squid Game they were brought out of oblivion. Children used to buy this particular street food from street vendors outside schools or in parks, and challenged each other to eat the outside without breaking the figure printed in the middle. Whoever succeeded was awarded, for free, another biscuit.

A Brief History of Dalgona

Dalgona is a sweet treat of very humble origins, created for the joy of South Korean children and made with simple ingredients, easy to find even for the poorest families.

Their origins date back to the mid-1950s, when during the Korean War, US soldiers came to the aid of South Korea, a US ally, following the invasion of the North Korean army. During their time in the southern part of the peninsula, American soldiers apparently used to hand out sweets to local children, but the extremely poor South Korean parents could not afford to buy them.

They then decided to produce at home, using only sugar, water and bicarbonate, this kind of lollipop that in a few years have become an iconic local street food, celebrated in its own way by Squid Game. Thanks to which it now seems that they are experiencing a renewed interest not only in their homeland, but throughout the world.

In just a few days, social media, and TikTok in particular, have been flooded with challenges in which users challenge each other to make these cookies to extract, just like in the game, the central shape. For pure fun, of course, with nothing extreme at stake.

How to Make Dalgona

The preparation of Dalgona  is very simple, and anyone at home with the tools available can replicate this recipe.

1. Abundant sugar is placed inside a saucepan, placed on a burner and stirred with a stick (or a whisk) to help it melt.
2. When the sugar has become real caramel, becoming amber, baking soda is added, with the mixture becoming dense and creamy.
3. Then the whole thing is flattened with the flat bottom of a pan to make the surface uniform and, after having given it a thin circular shape,  the figures that can also be seen in the series are impressed with a stencil.
4. The final result will be a sort of lollipop that, once cooled, is then packaged ready to be sold.

In Squid Game, the production wanted a real dalgona master on the set, called to prepare about 700 biscuits for the creation of the dedicated scene. "He was constantly making sweets, everywhere you could smell caramel" admitted one of the protagonists of the series, remembering the moments in which the challenge was filmed.