Candied Orange Peel
Ingredients
- Orange peel however much you have, cut into strips
- Water
- Sugar
Instructions
- Simmer the strips of peel in water to cover for about 10 minutes and drain.
- Cover with water again until the peels are just floating, then pour that water into a measuring cup.
- Take note of how much there is, then add that water back to the pan along with the same amount of sugar.
- Cook for 40 to 50 minutes, until the pith looks translucent. Lift the peel out onto a rack set over a baking tray and let cool and harden for a few hours. Store in the refrigerator – will keep for months and months. (Save the syrup for drinks! Just add soda water.)
Dundee Cake
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup butter softened
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 5 Tbsp Seville orange marmalade
- 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 cup candied orange peel
- 1 cup low bush cranberries
- 40 or so almonds blanched or unblanched
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 300F. Grease an 8-inch cake pan and line the bottom with greased parchment paper.
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition. Stir in marmalade at the end.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring just enough to combine.
- Stir in the raisins, candied peel and cranberries and mix until thoroughly combined.
- Spoon into the prepared cake pan and spread evenly with the back of the spoon.
- Arrange the almonds in concentric circles, starting from one in the middle and working outwards from there. Press them lightly into the batter with the palm of your hand.
- Place cake in the preheated oven and bake for about 1 hour and 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Check after an hour, and if the cake is browning too quickly, place a piece of tin foil over top. (It does tend to brown after an hour or so.)
- Remove cake from the oven and cool on a rack for about 15 minutes. Run a slim bladed knife around the edge of the cake to loosen. Place a plate over top and invert the cake onto the cake. Place another plate over top and invert again so the almond side is uppermost and slide onto the rack to continue cooling.
- Resist cutting into the cake until it has thoroughly cooled. Serve as is or with a spoonful of whipped cream on the side. Store in a tin in a cupboard and eat within a week.
It’s January and the stores are filled with oranges. This time of year is particularly special because the blood oranges show up for a brief moment between early January and the start of February. We’ve been eating one for breakfast every day, composting the peels, until the morning I realized, wait a second, we should be saving those to make candied peel.
I started peeling the daily orange more carefully, slicing off the top and the bottom and cutting gently through the peel in four sections, removing each quarter and putting it in a resealable bag in the fruit drawer in the fridge. When I’d amassed a few oranges’ worth of peels, I cut them into strips and candied them.
Suddenly, to paraphrase The Monks’ song, I had peels in my pocket and didn’t know what to do with them. I started looking around for recipes, finding lots of scope in Spain (almond and Seville orange cake), Sicily (whole orange and almond cake) and – Scotland. Robbie Burns Night was coming up. Dundee cake was it!
This classic fruit cake, from the Scottish town of the same name, is typically made with Dundee marmalade, grated orange peel, currants, and raisins. There are variations, as there are with all classic recipes; some cooks add glacé cherries, others a tablespoon of whisky. The version in the Scottish Rural Women’s Institute cookbook, another classic, and one of my favourite cookbooks, calls for 400 grams of mixed candied peel.
I took inspiration from that one, but since I didn’t have quite enough peel, added raisins and some lowbush cranberries too, because they go so well with oranges.
It may seem too soon after Christmas to be making another fruitcake, but – Robbie Burns! Even though by the time you read this the haggis will have been addressed and the songs sung, tuck it away in the recipe file for next year. P.S. If you still have peel in your pocket, look ahead: Lunar New Year is just around the corner. In several Asian cultures oranges are symbols of good luck. Idea: almond cookies studded with pieces of orange peel….
