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Recipe: candied orange peels

For many years we rented because we were in grad school, because post-docs are so short-term, because we lived in Southern California… All those years I cooked and produced vegetable and fruit scraps and bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have a compost pile of my own, in a yard of my own, to put on a garden of my own. Now that we’ve been in our own house for 2 years, I’ve been rejoicing in my own compost pile (well, compost bin – otherwise the winds would have my potato peels strewn across the next county) which sits in my own yard. I don’t have my own garden yet, but one day I will figure out what to grow in our 2-week growing season…

So it’s great that I have a composting system because I can reduce the amount of trash we take to the dump by half! Even so, I would prefer not to have to throw things away if possible. Since I was juicing oranges recently, a flash of brilliance hit me smack in the forehead and I decided to make candied orange peels. Mind you, I don’t dig on candied orange peels myself. I mean, I can stomach maybe one, or two – but that’s enough for the year. Jeremy on the other hand… he’ll sit there and eat one after another.

It’s a fairly simple process (but not a quick one) to make candied orange peels, but I never had a desire. In my pastry course, we did a massive candied orange peel campaign one night in a frenzy of garnishes and decorations. I loved that class, but it was fast-paced and because we divvied up the duties, I wasn’t able to get my hands on everything. All I ended up doing was peeling a dozen oranges and taking a ton of notes.

Recipe: choco-crisp cookies

One night during my pastry skills course, I was in a discussion with two other classmates over cookie recipes and how to achieve the proper texture at elevation. I’ve learned from Shan to try removing the leavening agent for my elevation and it seems to work well with most of the cakes I bake. He was passing by during our conversation and couldn’t help but interject, “freeze the dough”. I made a mental note to give it a try.

I used to bake a lot of cookies. It was easy in graduate school because I could bring in a double batch of cookies, set them in the office, and send the email out to the department. They’d be gone in a couple of hours. Graduate students are always hungry. I made cookies at least twice a week for stress relief and I fine tuned my recipes to the perfect texture – at sea level. When we moved to Colorado, I was disappointed with how many of my recipes had to be readjusted. I didn’t feel like wasting my time because I didn’t know where to start tweaking.

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Recipe: triple fudge kahlua torte

Jeremy’s birthday was over a week ago, but he was away at two meetings and I was visiting my nephew for his eighth birthday. Since Jeremy and my birthdays are nine days apart, we decided we would celebrate later, when we weren’t so short on time and money. We both tend to be fairly unsentimental about these things, so that worked out fine.

But… I did promise I would at least make him a special dessert. I asked what he would like and as usual, Jeremy couldn’t make up his mind. He’s so easy going that it is downright frustrating at times. I found a recipe in an old issue of Chocolatier which I modified somewhat, but it contains several of Jeremy’s favorite components such as chocolate cake, booze, espresso, and chocolate.

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