How to Make Candied Fruit

Good fruits for candying include pineapple, cherries, chopped apricots, watermelon rind, and lemon, orange or grapefruit peel. Use your candied fruit during the holidays in cookies and fruitcake, or dip in chocolate for your own homemade candies.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• sugars
• honey
• heavy saucepans
• candy thermometer
• fresh fruit
• Fresh Fruit
• Honey
• Sugars
• Fresh Fruit
• Candy Thermometer
• Heavy Saucepans

1. Prepare fruit. Cut pineapple, apricots and watermelon rind into small pieces; chop cherries in half; remove white pith from lemon, orange or grapefruit peel and cut into strips or small pieces.

2. Combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup honey and 1-1/2 cups water in heavy saucepan.

3. Boil over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches 235 degrees F on candy thermometer.

4. Drop small amount of fruit into liquid.

5. Cook on low heat 20-30 minutes until the fruit or rind is transparent.

6. Drain and repeat with rest of fruit.

7. Cool fruit and store in airtight container.

Tips & Warnings

• You can blanch citrus peels (dip them in boiling water for a few minutes) to make them less bitter.
• If desired, you can dehydrate candied fruit by spreading thin layers on trays and drying for 12-18 hours at 120 degrees F until fruit is no longer sticky and the center has no moisture.
• To sun dry, put trays in full sun for 1-2 days, stirring occasionally, until fruit is no longer sticky. Take trays in at night.
• To oven dry, spread on trays and dry at 120 degrees F for 18-24 hours.
• Store dried candied fruit in an airtight container.

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[dagored]

on 3/26/2009 I have done this a thousand times. It works great.I would add to the list of applicable fruits kumquats and madarinquats for a non-traditional variations. They are perhaps the easiest fruits to candy by this process, being citrus fruits that have naturally sweet and having a totally eatable rinds even in their un-candied state. They're rinds are completely devoid of the bitterness the grapefruit and other bigger citrus rind often have (though you might want to de-seed them before you candy them. While they are eatable too, I don't particularly like the seeds once these fruits are candied).Also, the sweetener can be changed up in many combinations -- I haver used all honey, and all sugar, and I have often used granulated Splenda for Baking too, though I wouldn't use 100% Splenda because it gets a bit funky tasting all by itself in this application -- but to use it as half the sweetene

[jowi]

on 1/8/2009 Hello! On Step 6 where we're told to drain and repeat with the rest of the fruit, do we reuse the same liquid over again that the last fruit came out of?

[PNW-PF]

on 1/3/2009 But WHY is the sugar required??? Our family includes a 44-yo adult and his 2 children who can eat honey but not the smallest amount of refined or raw, cane or beet sugar without their heart beats rising rapidly. Will the evaporation just take longer if i use honey (or maple syrup for nuts) only?

[lacy2430]

on 12/23/2008 Thank you for the article. I am making fruitcake for the first time and it requires candied cherries.

[pawpawcabin]

on 12/4/2008 Better then store bought and saves alot of cash.