Candied Orange Slices and Chocolate-Orange Baklava
And now for something more cheerful: ridiculously decadent holiday dessert. This is a pretty involved process, but can easily be spread out over several days. Attempt at your own discretion. Read all directions before you start, I'm not the most linear thinker.
Part One: Candied Orange Slices
Ingredients: 1 1/4 cup sugar and one cup water per one large navel orange; how many oranges you can do per batch depends on the size of your pan.
Wash your oranges thoroughly to remove any wax or other residue on the skin (you're not going to peel them) and then freeze them solid. Really solid. This will take about a day, but you can leave them in the freezer longer, it won't hurt them. Once they're good and hard, take a heavy sharp knife and cut them in to rounds, so you have nice flat circles of orange with the peel going all the way around the edge. Discard the ends of the orange.
I cut my slices about 1/4 to 3/8 inches thick. Slice much thinner and they'll fall apart in the center when you cook them; how thick is too thick is up to your personal tastes, but I like to keep them thin so they don't get too chewy. The important thing is to keep the thickness of the slices in a batch consistent so that they all cook at the same rate. Freezing the orange is what lets you cut nice consistent slices, otherwise it tends to squish funny.
While you're slicing up your orange(s), you can start the syrup. Take a heavy pan, the thicker the bottom the better, and mix together the sugar and water in it. You should have no more than an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pan, half an inch is fine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about ten minutes. Then lay your orange slices in; they can touch, but shouldn't overlap. They'll shrink up a bit at the beginning, so don't worry if you've got them packed pretty tightly at first. You'll need to turn the heat up a bit to bring the syrup back up to temperature, but watch it closely - you don't want to let it come to a fast boil, just a nice slow simmer. Flip the slices every five minutes. As the syrup reduces, you'll need to turn the heat down bit by bit to keep it at a simmer - the bubbles should be tiny but appear with a steady frequency. Keep cooking the slices until the pith (the white band between the skin and the meat) is translucent, about half an hour to forty-five minutes.
Once the oranges are done, pull them out and lay them on waxed paper to cool and dry. Once they've set up, you can dip them in whatever you want - salt, sugar, or chocolate, or some combination of the three, or store them in an airtight container. They'll stay sticky unless/until a coating is applied, so keep them spaced out on the wax paper. Save the syrup that's left in the pan, this is what goes over the baklava. You'll need several cups of it.
(I'll finish typing this up later, posting now for safety.)
Part One: Candied Orange Slices
Ingredients: 1 1/4 cup sugar and one cup water per one large navel orange; how many oranges you can do per batch depends on the size of your pan.
Wash your oranges thoroughly to remove any wax or other residue on the skin (you're not going to peel them) and then freeze them solid. Really solid. This will take about a day, but you can leave them in the freezer longer, it won't hurt them. Once they're good and hard, take a heavy sharp knife and cut them in to rounds, so you have nice flat circles of orange with the peel going all the way around the edge. Discard the ends of the orange.
I cut my slices about 1/4 to 3/8 inches thick. Slice much thinner and they'll fall apart in the center when you cook them; how thick is too thick is up to your personal tastes, but I like to keep them thin so they don't get too chewy. The important thing is to keep the thickness of the slices in a batch consistent so that they all cook at the same rate. Freezing the orange is what lets you cut nice consistent slices, otherwise it tends to squish funny.
While you're slicing up your orange(s), you can start the syrup. Take a heavy pan, the thicker the bottom the better, and mix together the sugar and water in it. You should have no more than an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pan, half an inch is fine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about ten minutes. Then lay your orange slices in; they can touch, but shouldn't overlap. They'll shrink up a bit at the beginning, so don't worry if you've got them packed pretty tightly at first. You'll need to turn the heat up a bit to bring the syrup back up to temperature, but watch it closely - you don't want to let it come to a fast boil, just a nice slow simmer. Flip the slices every five minutes. As the syrup reduces, you'll need to turn the heat down bit by bit to keep it at a simmer - the bubbles should be tiny but appear with a steady frequency. Keep cooking the slices until the pith (the white band between the skin and the meat) is translucent, about half an hour to forty-five minutes.
Once the oranges are done, pull them out and lay them on waxed paper to cool and dry. Once they've set up, you can dip them in whatever you want - salt, sugar, or chocolate, or some combination of the three, or store them in an airtight container. They'll stay sticky unless/until a coating is applied, so keep them spaced out on the wax paper. Save the syrup that's left in the pan, this is what goes over the baklava. You'll need several cups of it.
(I'll finish typing this up later, posting now for safety.)