Sweet Treats Saturday: Candied Orange Peels

Happy day before Halloween!  The chances of consuming a lot of sweet treats are high this weekend, but these will probably not be found in any of your candy bags.

I've always wanted to make candied orange peels, but was under the impression that they were hard to make and extremely time consuming.  After searching many recipes, I found one that proved otherwise.

The orange tree in our yard is in full bloom so I was lucky to have all of the materials on hand.

I followed the recipe exactly but only used oranges.  Some things to note:

• Make sure you remove the rind to avoid the flavor from the final orange peels.  You don't have to go overboard (I did, I was super cautious and made the peels very thin).  If you make them too thin, the orange peels become capsules of sugar. Literally, it seems like you are eating sugar with a side of orange.
• A variation of the recipe could include dipping this in chocolate.  I can't wait to try this!
• The peels are sweet from being saturated with the sugar mixture, so you don't have to garnish with too much sugar.  

Straight from simmering in the sugar mixture.  Ready to dry for an hour.

The orange peels turned out delicious! I'm going to have to make them again but dip half of the batch in chocolate.