Your Candy Needs Some Spice

One perk of moving from the Northeast to Texas was learning to add a little spice to things, like sprinkling Tajín on watermelon or enjoying a mangonada on a hot day. The same is true for candy: You should try the luxury of eating dulces enchilados — candies covered in a tangy, sweet, sour, and spicy mixture. Dulces enchilados are popular in Mexico and Texas, and they’ve become increasingly popular elsewhere thanks to TikTok and Instagram. And the minute you taste them, you’ll understand why it’s hard to go back to regular candy afterwards.

The good news is that dulces enchilados are pretty easy to make on your own and only require a few ingredients. You need powdered sugar, regular sugar, chamoy, and a spice mixture of your choice — the most common one being Tajín spice.

Chamoy is a popular condiment made of apricot, chilies, salt, and lime juice, and is added to foods like dried fruit, fresh fruit, mangonadas, and candies. The company Tajín (which isn’t just the spice mixture) makes its own line of chamoy, while a number of other brands make their own.

How to make dulces enchilados 

Making dulces enchilados means making a paste to cover the candies, then adding in a spice mixture of your choice. As The Saucy Kitchen suggests, it’s best to opt for sweet and tangy candies, like gummy worms, gummy rings, gummy bears, Skittles, Gushers, or the like. (Chocolate or milk-based candies tend not to be the best choice.)

To make the coating, mix chamoy and powdered sugar together in a 1:1 ratio. For a small batch — roughly about a single-serve package of Skittles — two tablespoons of chamoy and two tablespoons of powdered sugar is enough. Mix it together until it forms a translucent red paste, then add the mixture to your candy of choice, stirring until it’s fully coated. After that, just add in the spice at your preferred level. You can sprinkle a little over the top or mix it directly into the candy mixture.

The Saucy Kitchen suggests mixing half a cup Tajín spice mixture with 1/3 cup of sugar. Personally, I skipped the sugar and just used plain Tajín spice, but that can vary based on your own taste buds. Once it’s done, you’ll want to either eat it right away or store it in an airtight container.