Candied Citris Slices look and taste amazing. The combination of the sugar with the tartness of the Citris is gorgeous. They look fantastic on top of cakes and cheesecakes. You can just eat them as is and even dip them into chocolate!
INGREDIENTS
1 cup white sugar
Lemons, Limes, Grapefruits or Oranges. The amount of sugar syrup in this recipe is enough to do roughly x12 ORANGE slices, x24 LIME slices, x12 GRAPEFRUIT slices or x18 LEMON slices.
Note* You will need an ice-bath for this – If you haven’t got any ice you will need to half fill a medium bowl with water and put it in the freezer until it is quite cold before you start.
First wash the fruit extremely well, because you are mainly eating the rind (where all of the chemicals from spray are) and of course using organic fruit would be best.
Next, using a really sharp knife, slice the fruit as thinly as possible and then using the tip of
a small knife, poke out all of the pips.
Now put enough water in a pan to cover your fruit, and bring it to the boil.
While it is coming to the boil get an ice-bath ready by placing some ice in a bowl with enough water to cover the fruit.
Once the water is boiling, remove the pan from the heat and place the slices into the pan. With a spoon, move them in the water for one minute, moving them around so they are not stuck together. You are putting them in the boiling water to get rid of some of the bitterness from the rind.
Once a minute is up, pour the slices and the water from the saucepan through a sieve, over the sink and then plunge them into the ice-bath (or really cold water to cool them down quickly. You do this because at this stage you don’t want them to remain really hot and cook too much as the tender centres will fall out.
Once they have been in the cold water for one minute strain the water and slices through the sieve, over the sink again and leave the slices in the sieve draining over the empty bowl.
So leave the fruit to drain and then place 1 cup of cold water and the cup of sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat.
Bring to the boil , stirring occasionally.
Once boiling place your fruit slices in, in a single layer (as best as you can) and turn the heat up a bit and bring it back to the boil.
Once boiling again turn the heat down to medium/low so it is at a soft simmer. If it isn’t at a slow, quiet simmer turn the heat down a bit more. Everybody’s hobs or elements are different, my hobs are super hot and I can have something on absolute low and it will still be boiling! So just a soft simmer, not boiling because the centres will fall out of the fruit.
If your sugar syrup starts to froth or turn slightly brown take them off immediately because they are starting to caramelise, and they will turn brown and the centres will fall out. You can see in the below pic, the lemons (top left) that I left them in too long (I was probably on the phone…shame)…..see how some of them have a brown tinge and the centres haven’t stayed in as well as the others?
Simmer the fruit for around 50 minutes to 1 hour, gently moving them around often so they can all evenly get candied. As long as the centres aren’t falling out too much and the syrup isn’t frothing and turning brown you can leave them in until the syrup has nearly gone. You can see I took the oranges and the grapefruit to this stage but I took the limes and lemons off sooner because they started to froth and the syrup was slightly turning brown (around the 40 minute mark) I am wondering if it’s because lemons and limes contain more citric acid ? Just a guess 🙂
These are beautiful, shiny and translucent, they look fantastic, I especially loved the grapefruit, what a fantastic colour!
Storage – These will keep for one week in the fridge between sheets of baking paper or even better covered with their own sugar syrup (if there is any left).
Hopefully I can use these candied slices more in the future to show you how nice they look on cakes and desserts but so far on my ‘Baby Blog’ I have only used some on my Lime & Coconut friands. You can go HERE to see what they look like.
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