Monday, August 6, 2012

candied lemons

I had a huge wedding order for both cupcakes and a wedding cake.  Her colors were yellow and green and the entire decor just suited her perfectly!  Since we were going to do the lemon cupcake with lemon curd filling I needed to do something for the decoration; candied lemon.  It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and was pretty gosh darn tasty.  My only problem was getting them to dry.  Even after fifteen hours they were still very, very sticky so I put them into my dehydrator and dried them that way.  I was quite pleased with the results and my mom hasn't been able to keep her hands off the left overs.
To candy the lemon I followed the directions from here.  Here are some tips I learned along the way:
Make sure your pieces of lemon are even.  I used my mandolin and did they 1/8 inch thick as it didn't seem to mangle them as much.
I would blanch the lemon longer than one minute.  The peel was very tough and I think the extra blanching time (maybe a minute longer) would help that out.
I have a glass top stove and my first batch cooked in the sugar water absolutely burned.  It was NASTY! Throughout the remaining batches I had to keep a very close eye on things.  The second I started to see it getting even slightly bubbly, I turned off the heat to let things cool down.  The process still only took a bit over an hour but it certainly saved things from burning and browning.