Street Stall · Pulled Sugar Taffy
Melcocha de Baños
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Pedro M. Martínez Corada - www.martinezcorada.es / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Vendors pull and stretch the hot taffy by hand on a hook mounted outside their shopfront, a public performance that has become one of Baños's signature tourist sights.
Raw cane sugar is boiled down and then repeatedly pulled and folded over a wall-mounted hook until it lightens into a chewy, pale taffy. Street stalls in Baños sell twisted ropes of it to passersby.
Why it's made this way: Melcocha-making is a defining street craft of Baños, a Tungurahua town built around its sugarcane-growing valley.
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