Today's post is extremely monochromatic. If any of you have a phobia of the color orange, I'd stop now and go catch up on the latest episode of whatever TV show happens to be your guilty pleasure (I have about 7 myself). 
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I knew my last post's creation would create a plethora of 'worthless' orange peels as well as yielding their fruit, so my mind started thinking of ways that would result in less waste. Or, less compost for my friends' cute little worms. 

In the end I decided to go with candied orange peel since I couldn't think of anything else and really, what else is there to do with orange peel? I started by filleting most of the excess pith off the peel and then thinly slicing them. I then boiled them twice, rinsing in cold water after each boil, as per Giada's instructions
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After the second quick boil and rinse I again put them into boiling water, this time with added sugar. I don't think I compensated for the extra water I put in to cover the peels and ended up with not enough sugar. My peels didn't really ever dry, even after a couple of stints in an hot air blasted oven. 
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Right after I pulled them out of the sugar water mixture, about 15 minutes, I sprinkled with a little more sugar and waited. Meanwhile, I kept the sugar water on the stove and reduced it. I simmered it down to a little more than a 1/4 of its original volume. The final product is slightly bitter thanks to the peels but retained the nice orange flavour. It has a nice caramel flavour to it as well, a perfect accompanying dark note. 
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I'm excited to try it out the next time I feel moved to make pancakes. But don't let its name restrict you! It would also be good over ice cream, as a flavoring for coffee (Orange Mocha Frappuccino's anyone?), or even spooned over cereal in place of honey. 


-Bizzle
 
Something you will learn about me quickly, dear readers, is my utter inability to follow a recipe. No, I do not have a disability or even a compunction against them. Truly, I just prefer to create and diverge. (It's why I have a major in British Studies and not just English.) The two following morsels are products of this hypothetical approach to cooking. Basically, (one of) my mottos in the kitchen is, Let's Try It. 
To begin with is what I am going to call, uncreatively because it is not perfected, which is when it will acquire a 'real' name, Whole Orange Tart with a Chocolate Crust. I remembered coming across a post over at Smitten Kitchen for a Whole Lemon Tart. Only thing was, I had oranges at hand and not lemons. So I decided, why not? and gave it a go with oranges. 
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I adopted a basic pie crust dough to include vanilla and cocoa. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of pie and an even bigger skeptic of pie crust. I just don't like eating it. But I still make it because it is easy and seems right. Anyway, the filling was a whole blended orange and some sugar, a stick of butter, an egg and an egg yolk. And an indeterminate amount of 'dry ingredients.' Although this blog has no readers yet, if any future readers see this and demand a more explicit definition of these ingredients, leave a comment and I'll see if I remember. I didn't have a suitable pan for this tart, so I ended up using a muffin tin and making tartlettes. 
The first batch, which I did not overfill, cooked quite beautifully at 325 for another indeterminate amount of time. (Sorry people, precision is not my forte.) The second batch was slightly different in baking powder content and bubbled to an unsightly texture. Upon tasting though, they are quite good. Definitely a bit too sweet, which makes me glad my psychic foresight, aka fate, had me make them into tiny little bundles of goodness. One is definitely enough. 
The second delicious result of the evening is, for the time being, Orange Muffins with Currants and Poppy-seeds. Basically I had leftover filling from the tarts above. So I plopped in some European style yogurt, whole wheat flour, currants and poppyseeds, essentially making what I was hoping would more or less be a bread. I should have added a little more baking powder/soda because they turned out quite dense and did not rise like I wanted them to. However, they are yummy and tasty and overall an experimental success. 
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To close I would just like to say that these pics are slightly doctored. My regular camera lens is broken at the moment, so I was using my extremely inconvenient telephoto lens. Let's just say that trying to get a close up of an already small object without having to stand more than 5 feet away with a telephoto lens is difficult for an amateur like me.