Candied Peel

You know what everyone's favorite part of the orange is? The pith! Followed closely by the peel. But how to best extract the pith from the icky juicy fruit part? By being hideously artsy, apparently.

All this is to say, I don't especially like candied fruit. It, usually comes packaged with some sort of dark green peel and maraschino cherries, which I have reason to believe I'm allergic to. (That link also indicates that the dark green stuff is peppermint-flavored cherries. This is one of the nastiest things I've ever heard of. What is wrong with you people?) But, I wanted to make stollen, because it is Christmas! Therefore, I had (HAD!) to make my own candied peel. Obviously. Also, I was procrastinating from studying for my finals, which are, thankfully, over by now. Here are the before,
after, and results pictures of the peeling process.
The lemons were thin-skinned and very hard to peel. Next time, (ha! this batch had better last me for years) I will pick out the thick-skinned lemons. Then insult them. This recipe (and the upcoming stollen recipe) comes from Home Baking. This is barely a recipe though, you boil the peels for an hour, then change the water and boil them again for 20 minutes, then boil in a 2:1 sugar:water mixture for another hour, and let dry for a few days and coat in sugar. Now, it also says if you want smaller pieces (as I did) you should cut the peel in between water boilings. I forgot completely until they were already in boiling sugar syrup. As someone who got a blister between their thumb and index finger from boiling sugar during badminton week in gym, I was not about to slice up those peels. I did hack at them with kitchen shears for a while though to at least get them smaller. As it turned out, it wasn't hard to cut them after they dried, and the big ones were easier to flip over during the drying process, so not too much lost, I guess.

Fluffy! (Pancakes, not a dog or anything)

I made lemon-ricotta pancakes a few days ago, as you can see from the lists below, but I didn't take any pictures until yesterday, since when I did make them, my roommate and I sat at the kitchen table and basically ate them as soon as they came off the stove. They didn't need any accompaniment (although I did put some syrup on a few, as the chicken and waffles from the day before reminded me that I might like syrup after many years of finding it unappealing) and had the right amount of citrus. They were, though, somewhat bland. We decided they either needed some sort of berry jam...or bacon. Maybe both. I settled on yogurt and honey, obviously.


I used this recipe, but with more flour instead of hazelnuts, and I certainly didn't strain the ricotta first or make the lemon sugar the day before. I also added the juice of a lemon, and if I make them again, I'd use oil instead of butter because I think it sort of solidified when added to the cold ingredients, although there might have been some curdling due the the lemon too.