chocolate and orange, a love supreme

There was a TV commercial for a candy with a tag line of "2 great tastes that taste great together."
If memory serves, it was for a peanut butter filled chocolate cup. That is not my pick for a heavenly combo, but chocolate with candied orange peel is.

Yesterday, I chiseled out dried and candied orange peel from my mom and sprinkled it on top of the little bit of chocolate ice cream my family left at the bottom of a container taking up space in the freezer. Truly a pleasure. Here is link to recipe for making it youself: http://storiesfromtheoldneighborhood.blogspot.com/search/label/candied%20orange%20peel

My favorite treat is long strips of candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate from the little shop attached to bloomer's chocolate factory.  A friend lasciviously smacked her lips at the cocoa powder men in brown jumpsuits who lugged packages into trucks.

Aldi sells inexpensive yummy dark chocolate bars with orange peel, hot peppers, etc before Christmas.

One of my favorite chocolate chip recipes is from The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook, edited by Michael Baer and Fran Irwin, as follows, my changes in parentheses:

Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar (I just used white, smaller amount, I don't like overly sweet cookies, plus I was using sweetened candied orange peels)
1 stick softened butter (I used unsalted)
2 tablespoons oil
grated zest of 1 orange (I used chopped bits of candied orange peel)
2 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I used regular, unbleached white flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda (I used baking powder)
 1 teaspoon salt ( I skipped, I get annoyed tasting salt in cookies)
1/2 cup walnuts (I skipped, didn't want the distraction)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I roughly chopped up some dark chocolate into irregular pieces, love the sensual experience of biting into a big, soft, melty chunk)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line baking sheet with baker's parchment. 

Cream together sugars, butter, oil, and orange zest.  Add the eggs and mix well.

Combine the flours, soda, salt, and stir to mix.  Add to the cremed misture and blend well.  Stir in the nuts and the chocolate chips.  Drop by the tablespoonful or scopp onto the baking sheet; flatten slightly to make thick, round disc shapes.  Allow about 2 inches between each cookie.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cookies are light brown.  Let cool on the sheet completely for a few minutes before transferring the cookies to a rack to cool completely.  Yields about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

I won't be making these anytime soon as the heat index is about 104 degrees F.  Once the weather cools down, I make extra and freeze them for a treat in the summer that follows.

Candied orange peel, rose maze

Life is sweeter with certain nonstaples: rose petal jam, poppyseeds in a can, candied ginger, dark chocolate, dried fruit, marizipan, candied orange peel.

One of my favorite memories: as a little girl, at an elderly aunt's, with my young mother, little brothers, on a hot sunny, summer afternoon, picking up a feral kitten, so wee, so new its fur was downy, who climbed my entire height with its exquisitely sharp, tiny claws.  It sprang away.  My aunt led us with baskets to her rose maze, tall hedges serpentined this way and that, laden with fragrant blood red, pudding maroon roses as big as my hands. An out house stood nearby. I felt very strange, destructive, plucking off their petals, never having desecrated a living thing before.  She told me to try not to bruise them.  When our basket were full, this is more fuzzy, she cooked them on top of her wood fueled stove with beet sugar, spring water (I imagine).  Intoxicating, rose petal jam served warm on yeasty bread she baked anticipating our visit.

I always loved the surprise of candied orange peel in the dough of paczki, cookies, noodles with poppyseed, sprinkled on ice cream with bits of dark chololate, big strips dipped in melted dark chocolate (thank you Blommer chocolate factory store).  This year I made my own candied orange peel.  I read that grapefruit and lemon peels can be remade the same way.  I watched various youtube videos and a couple of recipe websites to piece it together.  Funnily, some did not explain what simple syrup was or the proportions of sugar and water, one to one as it turns out. I would only use organic fruit peels for this.

So this is what I did:

Peeled 4 organic navel oranges, served fruit to family.
Boiled the peels for a long time in sauce pan with water to cover, drained, changed the water, boiled again, drained.
You can do it 3 times, each time takes away more bitterness.
Let cool.
Peeled away the white pith, leaving thin orange skins.
Cut into small pieces sized for future baking purposes. Had I wanted to dip them in chocolate I would have left in long strips.
Tossed in sauce pan with simple syrup to cover. Simple syrup is 1 cup water to 1 cup sugar, heated and melted. This is plenty if you are working with 4 peels. Increase amounts in same proportions to cover whatever amount you are working on.
Cooked for a long time, stirred when I remembered.
Turned off when the pot was almost dry. Sooner would've been fine too. Can use syrup on pancakes and such. Or eat out of pan with spoon.
Dumped out orange peel pieces onto a  flat plate of sugar. 
Tossed around so all the pieces were coated.  Some did clump together. I was not too careful about leaving syrup behind in pot.
Dried on the plate for a couple of days.
Stored in fridge in glass jar.

This is an easy thing to do a little at a time if you're peeling fruit for a few people.  You can also store peels in the fridge in a plastic bag until you accumulate a larger amount.

Happy New Year to you.  Carry sweetness and light in your heart.
Strew some candy on the floor of any house you visit today.