Happy New Year, everyone! Toward the end of last year, I was overcome by this desire to make something nice for Agung’s family and send them little treats—yeah, I know, maybe I’m not supposed to, but I love them. So I scrolled through my collection of saved posts on Instagram and stumbled upon this seemingly-easy recipe by fationatefoodbelly. I thought it was pretty simple and pretty festive. But, boy, was I wrong! Do not be fooled, this recipe is pretty much hard work. But, you know what, I thought it was worth it. Once the cooking starts, it’s pretty straightforward, so the result was exactly as I expected it…well, almost.
3-4 small jars (original recipe via fationatefoodbelly)
Prep time: 2-3 hours
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 300 gr citrus peel (I used navel oranges, wonkam orange, mandarines, clementines, lemon, lime)
- Sugar syrup (3 cups of sugar, 3 cups of water, or equal parts water and sugar)
- Coating: (1 tbsp. citric acid, 1/2 cup sugar)
Instructions
- Wash the citrus fruits. Peel and scrape away the white parts of the peel.
- Cut the peels into thin strips.
- In a pot, boil the citrus peels in water for 20 mins or until they become translucent.
- In a saucepan, combine equal parts water and sugar and bring to a boil.
- Add the citrus peels to the boiling syrup and boil for about 15-20 minutes.
- Remove citrus peels from the syrup and place them on a wire rack to cool and dry.
- In a bowl, add a mix of sugar and citric acid. Then, coat the citrus peels.
- Once the citrus peels start to crystallize, store them in an airtight container at room temperature.
Things to Note
When choosing citrus fruits, I suggest picking ones that have thick peels. As I’ve mentioned, I used navel oranges, wonkam orange, mandarines, clementines, lemon, and lime—but lime was a bad choice, because the peels are thin and hard to separate from the meat. Scraping away the white inner layer will take time, a lot of strength and perhaps a good knife, so be patient and good luck!
I actually made too much sugar syrup when making my batch (6 cups of each), which works just fine, but I just have a lot of leftover. You can store the sugar syrup in the fridge for future recipes too, by the way.
For the coating, the original recipe put down 2 tbsp. for the citric acid and I find it ended up being too sour—it may have been the intention. I thought 1 tbsp citric acid should be enough for a sweeter result.
Happy New Year, everyone! Toward the end of last year, I was overcome by this desire to make something nice for Agung’s family and send them little treats—yeah, I know, maybe I’m not supposed to, but I love them. So I scrolled through my collection of saved posts on Instagram and stumbled upon this seemingly-easy recipe by fationatefoodbelly. I thought it was pretty simple and pretty festive. But, boy, was I wrong! Do not be fooled, this recipe is pretty much hard work. But, you know what, I thought it was worth it. Once the cooking starts, it’s pretty straightforward, so the result was exactly as I expected it…well, almost.
3-4 small jars (original recipe via fationatefoodbelly)
Prep time: 2-3 hours
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 300 gr citrus peel (I used navel oranges, wonkam orange, mandarines, clementines, lemon, lime)
- Sugar syrup (3 cups of sugar, 3 cups of water, or equal parts water and sugar)
- Coating: (1 tbsp. citric acid, 1/2 cup sugar)
Instructions
- Wash the citrus fruits. Peel and scrape away the white parts of the peel.
- Cut the peels into thin strips.
- In a pot, boil the citrus peels in water for 20 mins or until they become translucent.
- In a saucepan, combine equal parts water and sugar and bring to a boil.
- Add the citrus peels to the boiling syrup and boil for about 15-20 minutes.
- Remove citrus peels from the syrup and place them on a wire rack to cool and dry.
- In a bowl, add a mix of sugar and citric acid. Then, coat the citrus peels.
- Once the citrus peels start to crystallize, store them in an airtight container at room temperature.
Things to Note
When choosing citrus fruits, I suggest picking ones that have thick peels. As I’ve mentioned, I used navel oranges, wonkam orange, mandarines, clementines, lemon, and lime—but lime was a bad choice, because the peels are thin and hard to separate from the meat. Scraping away the white inner layer will take time, a lot of strength and perhaps a good knife, so be patient and good luck!
I actually made too much sugar syrup when making my batch (6 cups of each), which works just fine, but I just have a lot of leftover. You can store the sugar syrup in the fridge for future recipes too, by the way.
For the coating, the original recipe put down 2 tbsp. for the citric acid and I find it ended up being too sour—it may have been the intention. I thought 1 tbsp citric acid should be enough for a sweeter result.