Sometimes I get a little bit fancy

A while back, I saw a seven year old make chocolate covered candied orange peels at a bake sale and I thought to myself, hey, I could do that. So when it came time to donate concessions for the Arts for All Benefit Cabaret, I decided to make them. "I can't just make cookies or brownies," I thought. "Anyone could make those." I have to be special! I have a reputation to uphold!

And so, chocolate covered candied orange peels were made.

This recipe makes a TON of these things - seriously, I think something like 150 were made. That's probably too many for any normal person, so I'd recommend halving the recipe (at least).

Take six oranges and cut off the ends.


Then cut slivers of peel all around the orange, like this, see?


You want them to be big enough to eat, but not so big that the peel is overwhelming. You can trim them down a bit at this point, but I so did not have the patience for that. My house is now totally overrun with orange peels.


Then place the peels in a pot of boiling water and cook for a few minutes. Then rinse them off and repeat. You do this step for a couple of reasons - one: to try and remove some of the bitterness of the peel and two: to open up the pores of the skin so that they'll soak up the sugar better. We'll get to that step.

Dissolve a cup and a half of sugar into a cup and a half of water (this is called simple syrup). Bring to a simmer and add your peels.


Cover and cook over low heat until the syrup is dissolved, about an hour. Then lay them on a cooling rack to dry.


I left them out to dry for about six hours and when I came home, they were still not dry. I was afraid that I'd ruined them somehow, but I melted a bag and half of bittersweet chocolate chips -


- and carried on anyways. I melted the chocolate in a makeshift double boiler (I boiled some water and put a metal mixing bowl in the water, then put the chocolate in it and stirred until it melted - that's way more confusing than it sounds, believe me). But you can just use the microwave if you want.

Then just dip the peels in chocolate -


- and lay them out on parchment paper to dry.


They came out beautifully and tasted great. The chocolate and orange flavors went very well together and the texture was interesting - the hardened chocolate complimented the gumminess of the orange peels.

I still have a ton of them if you want some. Just let me know.