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Candied Fruit Peel

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YouTube: Making Candied Citrus Peel For Fruitcake

As you prepare your Christmas Plum Pudding, it's easy to buy those horrid containers of "candied peel" and "fruitcake mix" at the store. But those things are usually sold only around the Christmas holiday, and you're out of luck if you want to make a spiced fruitcake or pudding at any other time of the year. (For instance, the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha also includes the consumption of sweet cakes as part of the celebration.) Also – and more important – do you really want to include those big hunks of high fructose corn syrup-treated, gelatinized fruit in your own pudding?

Candied citrus is easy to prepare, and it only takes about an hour to prepare. The hard part is peeling the oranges, lemons and other citrus.

Pan needed: Saucepan for boiling the sugar syrup. Also, you need a colander to drain the boiling water, plus a cooling rack for the finished candy.

Using a good vegetable peeler, peel the top layer of rind off of each piece of fruit. Try to remove as little of the bitter white pith as possible.

Put the fruit peels into a sauce pan, and cover with about 2 cups of water. Bring water to a boil in the saucepan. Boil the fruit slices for ten minutes, to remove the bitterness. Drain the fruit peels into a colander. Then put the peels back into the saucepan, add 2 cups of fresh water, and boil them again for another ten minutes. Drain the fruit peels into the colander a second time.

In the same saucepan, combine 2 cups of water and 2 cups granulated sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved in the water, then add the fruit peels once again and bring to a boil. When the sugar solution is boiling, reduce the boil to a simmer. Simmer the fruit peels in the syrup for twenty minutes, then remove the fruit peels from the syrup and place them onto a rack to cool off. When theyy're cool but still sticky, sprinkle granulated sugar on them to give them a crunchy coating of sugar. At this point you can eat them, use them in a pudding or fruitcvake, or place them in an airtight container and store them in the refrigerator until they're ready to use.