Wednesday, December 12, 2012

It's Not Too Late to do some Holiday Baking!

Along with my usual holiday baking of sugar cookies, etc, I decided to try a couple new recipes this year.  The first one is for Candied Citrus Peels.  I found the recipe in Sunset magazine.

The first step is to section your chosen citrus fruit and then carefully peel.  I tried to keep my peels in nice looking sections.  (It didn't always work.)



The tricky part for me was getting the membrane off.  After slicing away for quite a while I really understood why candied citrus peel is so expensive to purchase.


Here's a slice with membrane still attached and one where I've carefully cut the membrane away.


After boiling in water three times to help remove any bitterness, the final cooking takes place with sugar water and goes on for about 1 1/2 hours.


The final result are these translucent lovely looking peels which are sweetened from all that sugar.


The recipe calls for drying them overnight and then rolling them in more sugar.  I couldn't get any sugar to stick to mine after they had dried.  But it didn't matter, they still tasted great.


I did as the recipe suggested though, and dipped some of them in chocolate.  Yummy!
I used the amount of fruit the recipe called for; one grapefruit, two oranges and two lemons.  (I also added two lemons that a friend gave me earlier.)  I'm glad I didn't buy any extra fruit, cutting all that membrane off the peels is very time consuming.


The results were delicious though.  Here's the recipe:


The second new recipe I made this year was for Fruit Jellies.
This recipe is much easier to make.
Here is the finished result as I'm cutting it into squares.


You can make any shapes you like as you cut it out.  I would suggest adding just a bit, 1/4 teaspoon or so, of flavoring to this recipe.  It wasn't quite the sharp flavor I would have liked.  Still good though.  I made two batches, one from orange juice and one from lemon juice.

Here I've rolled them in sugar as suggested.


Kim came up with the bright idea to dip these in chocolate also.  Great plan.
(Of course what can't be improved by being dipped in chocolate?)


Kim likes them chocolate covered so much that he wants me to dip the rest of them.
Here's the recipe: 


And Frankie is enjoying our Christmas tree almost as much as we are;


And if you're local.....we still have three cats to adopt out to good homes, so please, please pass these pictures along.  These cats are up to date on their distemper and rabies shots and have been spayed/neutered.  They are 8 months old now.  We're asking $20 per cat.




Do you have any plans to try new things/traditions/recipes this year?



5 comments:

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

Your recipes look good. I like the idea of dipping both in chocolate...love chocolate. I made my cookies last week, have eaten far too many. May have to make more. I tried a recipe that I pulled from a magazine years ago and never made until this year. Chewy Chocolate Ginger cookies. Fresh grated ginger and chunks of chocolate in chocolate cookies....pretty good!!

François said...

Vraiment de bonnes recettes, la première me plait bien, il n'y a que le pamplemousse que je ne pourrais pas manger bien que j'en raffole. C'est interdit le pamplemousse avec mon traitement, ça inhibe les effets de la molécule et peut me provoquer un infarctus. Le pamplemousse est très dangereux pour ça ! Mais je me laisserais bien tenter par l'orange et le citron. Je vais envoyer le lien à Tamara qui a la patience pour cela ! Bisous
François

Victoria Williams said...

Pepé was adopted! Thanks Josh!

Emily said...

wow your peels turned out so lovely! what a coincidence, i just made candied citrus peels for the first time a few days ago. my friend bought me a buddah's hand citron from whole foods, because she knew i'd been wanting to try one of those for years (they're crazy looking, like an octopus lemon). anyway, i didn't use as intense a recipe as you did but they turned out pretty tasty.

LJB said...

I bought a big box of oranges recently.....Perhaps I'll try this! I wsa thinking it might be nice to dip them in a variety of things...dark chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, chocolate chip mint?