Here are some of the recipes I use for my Christmas baskets.
Candied Orange Peels
There are tons of recipes for these-when I googled “recipe candied orange peel” I came up with 617,000 hits! Granted a few of those were probably for recipes that used candied orange peel as an ingredient, but still!
Scrub oranges and peel off any stickers (duh). Don’t be too concerned about wax etc, these will be boiled a few times.
Cut your orange peels into 1″ by 1/4″ slivers. Oranges with a thick white pith are preferable. I usually buy a bag of oranges and peel and eat them over the course of a week, throwing the peels into a zippered bag in the fridge. At the end of the week I make the peels. I find you get nicer shaped peels if you quarter the orange, then pull the flesh out to eat, rather than ripping lots of little sections off.
Boil the peels for about 10 minutes in plenty of water. Drain, rinse and repeat. This not only gets all the wax, pesticides etc off the rinds, but also softens them up and gets them ready to soak up the syrup.
Place 2 cups of white sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan large enough to hold all the peels and syrup without boiling over. Cook the sugar and water together, stirring until all the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is clear. Then bring to a boil and boil for about 10 minutes.
Add the peels into the syrup and boil gently until the white part of the peel turns translucent. This will probably take close to 30 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of the peels.
Drain peels well. The syrup will have a sort of orangy flavor, so to be frugal, you can save it and use it to sweeten tea, lemonaide etc, or to use in place of honey in recipes. Take the drained peel and lay them out on cookie racks to dry-they will end up sort of a sticky, tacky consistency. I usually cover them with a clean tea towel and let them dry for 4 or 5 hours, even overnight.
Finally shake them in a bag of plain old white sugar to coat them. Most recipes tell you to do this right away after draining them, but I find that leads to a very thick layer of sugar, which I don’t like.
When complete, I place my candied peels in the freezer until I’m ready to package and ship them. I personally like to just eat them plain, but I’ve also chopped them up and added them to cakes and muffins.
Peppermint Bark
***Note-The Peppermint Bark you see in this picture retails for $19.95!!!
This is so simple that I almost hate to call it a recipe. All you do crush up candy canes in a food processor, then melt white chocolate in a double boiler. Mix the white chocolate and candy together, spread on a wax paper lined cookie tray, and let cool (I usually stick it in the freezer). When totally solid, break it into pieces. Store in freezer until ready to send.
If you want to be really fancy you can melt dark chocolate first, spread a thin layer down, then freeze till solid. Then put the peppermint/white chocolate on top.
I also saw a recipe last spring for easter where they combined orange or lemon hard candy with the white chocolate to make a citrus bark. Yum!
**Note-you can melt chocolate in the microwave, but I have burned batches that way. The double boiler is the safest way to melt it easily. I bought a double boiler insert sort of like THIS that fits inside a regular pan.
For these I’ve just given you a link to a very similar recipe. I personally use the recipe out of Herb Mixes and Spicy Blends by Maggie Oster. I am never quite sure what the copyright is for recipes-so since this one is directly out of a book I will not post it here. You can either get this wonderful cookbook out of the library (isn’t interlibrary loan a wonderful thing for resources like this?) or you can use the very similar recipe that I linked to at epicurious.com. I usually buy a big container of fairly expensive mixed nuts, then spread it out by adding a can or two of unsalted peanuts. This recipe makes a sort of candied nut cluster. In most cookbooks you can find a few nut recipes, you can make hot and spicy, or various other sweet types! Be creative.
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Tomorrow my Biscotti recipe and links to similar chili sauce and watermelon pickles (sorry, can’t give away Lila’s secret family recipes-but I can link to very similar one!)
I’m gettin’ hungry already! I dutifully help to dispose of the portions not aesthetically pleasing enough to make it into the gift boxes! 😉
DH
Thanks for the ideas. I don’t know if you saw the recipe exchagne at Overwhelmed with Joy
thought you might want include yours.
Thanks for posting these. I especially want to do the peppermint bark, because my system doesn’t do chocolate so well anymore.
Nice entry. And so earlt for Christmas. (I read somewhere recently that some K-marts already have christmas trees out. Augh.) Anyway, I am doing a blog watch for upstate/fingerlakes food blogs. Let me know if you think you are a fingerlakes food blog and I willput a long to you on my site. My site is Cooking With Ideas at http://www.cookingwithideas.typepad.com
Thanks for the ideas, they look yummy!
I used to make candied orange peel but to spice it up I would dip half of each piece in dark chocolate.
Yummy 🙂
ohhh, chocolate and orange. Yum.
You say you freeze the orange peel. How do you package it when you give it away, and how long does it last out of the freezer? Thanks!
Elena-I have candied orange peels that have been in the freezer since last year and I think that they are fine. Out of the freezer in an airtight container I’d feel comfortable with them for several weeks, even longer in the fridge. To ship them to family I simply put them in one of those fancy cello treat bags and tape them shut with clear packing tape. I haven’t had any complaints.
I did do a google search and could only find “store in an airtight container”.