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.

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.