Candied Peel Labels

We spent some time yesterday colouring in labels for the newly made candied peel, which I also put into jars. I'm wondering now if I should be including the date on the labels.

Chocolate Covered Candied Peel Recipe

After making Candied Peel last week I was keen to try doing some baking with it, so I mulled over the possibilities. It felt a bit early in the year for Pannettone (I will try this recipe, as it can be done in the breadmaker) and the same with Christmas pudding. I thought about just making some flapjack and adding the peel instead of the usual mix of raisins and chopped apricots. But, in the end I succumbed to the inevitable and dipped it in chocolate.
When searching for recipes I was spoilt for choice, it seems everyone who has ever made candied peel then feels the need to coat it in chocolate.
I expect there are a few reasons for this:

1. because you can, and it's an excuse to use chocolate.
2. because candied peel by itself, although delicious, can get a bit sweet if you eat too much of it, and dipping it in a bitter chocolate enables you to eat more of it while feeling like you are eating a delicacy rather than just devouring a jar of candied peel.

So, I was won over, after some reading up (and worrying about the intricacies of 'tempering' chocolate - far too time consuming for something that won't last more than a few days) I settled on the following:

Ingredients

About 25 long (5cm) strips of Candied Peel (Orange, Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit)
50g (half a bar) Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate

Method

Break the chocolate into a pudding basin over a small saucepan of simmering water and wait until it melts.

Holding the candied peel at one end, dip and twist into the molten chocolate until about two thirds are covered.

Allow drips to fall back into the basin, then lay out to dry on a wire rack over greaseproof paper.

Makes: 25

These dried with a matt finish, no doubt because I didn't go to the trouble if tempering my chocolate, and looked extremely tempting. The mix of sweet and citrus peel with the bitter dark chocolate works very well. These were meant for a birthday present on Tuesday, but I don't think they'll last that long.

Glossary: Marmalade

Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from citrus fruits.
In the UK bitter Seville oranges are traditionally used, although lemons, limes and grapefruit (or combinations) can also be used successfully. The Seville orange season is short (December to February), so Marmalade is usually made around this time.
The word marmalade can trace it's meaning back to the Portuguese word for quince, which is marmelo.
The word marmalade is now protected by European law and can only be applied to jams made from oranges, lemons and grapefruit. It's not clear where this leaves onion marmalade.

Candied Peel Recipe

This is taken from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog.

Ingredients

Citrus Peel (lemon, grapefruit, orange, lime)
Granulated sugar
Water

Method
See here for pictures of the method.

Grapefruit skins are much thicker than other citrus skins. Cooking them a while in boiling water helps loosen up the white pithy part so it is easier to scrape off.

Scrub the outside rinds thoroughly to remove any dirt. Put rind in cold water, bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Drain and repeat this process two more times. Drain, rinse with cold water, and scrape away the pithy white part of the peel. Slice into strips.

For each cup of rind, prepare a sugar syrup of 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water. Put rind in syrup and cook slowly until syrup is completely absorbed - several hours. Stir occasionally and watch carefully near the end of the process.

Cool the peel and coat the strips with granulated sugar.
Dry overnight on a rack.

Candied Peel

When making marmalade last week I froze some unused lemon peel with the thought of using it for something constructive. After some thought, and research, I decided to have a go at candied peel, not something I'd usually even use. Hopefully having some in the house will be useful when it comes to baking, and for mincemeat at Christmas if it lasts that long.
I wanted to have a wider range of peel than just two lemons, so the bag in the freezer grew to contain the following:

Peel of three lemons - 170g (left over from marmalade making)
Peel of 1 grapefruit - 140g (a breakfast treat)
Peel of five oranges - 255g (a regular winter craving)
Peel of 2 limes - 100g (I wanted some green in the mix, so cooked Thai curry)

I pulled all this out the freezer in the morning so it was thawed when I came to prepare it.


There seemed to be several ways of preparing the peel, either repeated boiling and draining, or just prolonged boiling, but all recipes needed the peel to have the membranes scraped off and then be sliced. This took about 20 minutes, I wasn't too fussy about removing all the pith as I'd read it added to the succulency of the finished product, which made sense - the more pith, the more sugar could be soaked up.



Roughly following the recipe from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog, I boiled all the peel 3 times draining in between.

See here for the recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.00 665g left over citrus peel
£1.39 1.5kg sugar
£1.39 Total
£1.63 per kg of Candied Peel (50% of the cost at Tesco)

I choose to use the above recipe as it had a nice adaptable way of measuring the sugar syrup - using cups as a volume measure. It also gave me a chance to use one of these lovely measuring cups from Nigella Lawson.

I had 6 cups of peel, which wasn't too tightly packed, in hindsight I should probally have packed it in a bit more, as I ended up with way too much syrup. Having surplus did mean that I wasn't concerned about the pan catching or drying out. I do also now have a bottle of citrus flavoured sugar syrup, which makes a nice drink with fizzy water. I may be tempted to try a gin fizz this weekend.
In went the peel to the syrup.


After two and a half hours of simmering the peel had turned translucent, so I drained it and left it on racks before dusting with granulated sugar. I'll be letting it dry out in a large bowl for a few days before packing into jars.


This made a massive 850g of candied peel, which judging by the starting weight of peel means about a quarter of it is sugar. It should last a while, in an airtight jar apparently it's ok for up to a year. Now I just need something to do with it all before it gets nibbled away, time to get baking I feel.

Recipe Timings

1 hrs Preparation
0.5 hr Draining and Dusting
0.5 hr Potting

2.5 hrs Cooking
48 hr Drying

Taste Test

It tastes wonderful, initially sweet with a citrus bite afterward, with also a real difference between fruits. The lime could have done with being a bit softer - more boiling next time. Being able to cut the peel to size will be excellent when cooking with it.

Marmalade Labels

Today I finally got round to sorting out some labels for the jars of marmalade I made last week. These were drawn out on A4 paper by the whole family (1 child and 2 grown ups), then reduced down to fit on the jars, it was a nice way to pass a snowy afternoon in front of the fire.

Marmalade Cookies Recipe

After the success of my first ever batch of marmalade I was soon itching to make something using it - having it on toast in the morning just wasn't enough.
I had got an image in my head of something soft and sweet with bits of lovely tangy marmalade in it, perhaps a cake or biscuit. After some searching, and almost going for Margaret Hickey's Golden orange & walnut flapjacks on the BBC Good Food website, I found a recipe for Marmalade Cookies on the Supercook website.
I've adapted it below:

Ingredients

175g (6oz) plain flour
50g (2oz) ground almonds (I used oatbran instead)
100g (4oz) caster sugar
75g (3oz) butter, cut into small pieces
1 medium egg, beaten
3 tbsp orange marmalade

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/ 350ºF/ Gas Mark 4. Grease and line 2 large baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Sieve the flour into a bowl and stir in the ground almonds (or oatbran) and sugar. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Add the egg and marmalade and bring the mixture together to form a soft dough. Wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Divide the mixture into 16 pieces, and gently roll each piece into a ball. Place on the baking trays and press down to form rounds approx. 5cm (2 inch) in diameter.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden. Allow to cool on the baking trays, then transfer to a wire rack.

Makes: 16

I found the dough very sticky (I was probably over enthusiastic with the marmalade) , so used some plain flour when rolling it into balls.
These were pretty ordinary soft biscuits, until you bit into a piece of marmalade when they were delicious. Lovely with a cup of Tea, and a great way to get two doses of marmalade a day.

Marmalade Recipe

This is taken from the 1995 edition of the "Good Housekeeping" Cookery Book.

Ingredients

1.4kg (3lb) Seville oranges
juice of 2 lemons
3.4 litres (6 pints) water
2.7kg (6lb) sugar

Method
See here for pictures of the method.

Halve the oranges and squeeze out the juice and pips. (membranes can be scraped out into a sieve over a bowl)
Tie the pips and any membranes into a muslin.

Slice the orange peel and put in a preserving pan with the fruit juices, water and muslin bag.

Simmer gently for about 2 hours until the peel is soft and the liquid reduced by half, remove the bag and squeeze out any liquid.

Add the sugar, stirring gently until dissolved.
Bring to the boil and boil the mixture rapidly for about 15 minutes.

Test for a set and when setting point is reached, take off the heat and remove any scum.

Leave to stand for 15 minutes, then stir to distribute the peel.
Pot in steralised jars and cover.

Makes about 4.5kg (10lb)

Marmalade

An exciting few days - making marmalade for the first time, something I've always fancied doing but never got round to. I think as it was I probably left it a bit late, luckily the local supermarket had bags of Seville oranges.
I promptly bought several bags and left them in a bowl for a while.

Researching recipes threw up a quandary, whether to use the 'whole fruit method' as recommended by Mary Cadogan on the BBC Good Food website, or to go with the 'slice the peel before simmering' version from my trusted "Good Housekeeping" Cookery Book.
In the end the second won out, purely because it was late in the afternoon and I didn't want to hang around waiting for oranges to cool before slicing them.
See here for the recipe.

Recipe Costs

£3.90 2kg Seville oranges
£0.60 2 Lemons
£2.51 2.7kg sugar
£7.01 Total
£1.55 per kg of Marmalade

First task was to juice the oranges and remove the pips and membranes, I microwaved the fruit for 30 seconds first (a good trick when juicing lemons) then after juicing scooped out the pulp with a cheap metal spoon (the cheaper the spoon the sharper the edge). I found a few cuts on my hands which I'd forgotten were there.


The pips and membranes went in the muslin, and the sliced peel was added to the water and juice along with the juice of two lemons (I froze the lemon peel, I'm sure it'll come in useful).
I was concerned that the slicing would take a long time, so went for a medium shred, but in the end in only took 10 minutes, thanks to a lovely sharp new knife I'd got for Christmas.

After boiling for several hours, reducing the liquid by half, I left the pan on the top of the stove overnight. One of the recipes I'd read recommended this, as otherwise the whole process can take a whole day.
It was a glorious smell to come down to in the morning.

I'm always surprised at how much sugar you need to put in, but it's soon forgotten once it dissolves into a fragrant, deep coloured, sticky gloop.
Reaching setting point took about an hour, I fear I may have overcooked it slightly, I only reached 210 degrees C on the thermometer rather than the recommended 221, but didn't dare push it any further. The saucer test indicated I was ready to put it in jars, and the finished marmalade set fine. I feel I may need to rely less on the thermometer in the future.


As a treat I added a tablespoon of whisky to several of the small jars and stirred it in well. Opinion varies about when to add this, but as I only wanted it in a few jars it was easier to add at the end (although I can see it may affect the consistency) rather than while cooking. Also I couldn't see the point of losing the alcohol.

Recipe Timings

1.5 hrs Preparation
0.5 hr Potting

2 hr first cooking
1hr second cooking

Taste Test

As suspected the marmalade was slightly on the thick side, but still fine for spreading.
It's a lovely dark colour and less sweet (more tangy) than some you might get commercially.