Candied Lemon Peel

I candied lemon peel last evening. It's so easy, and the end product is perfect for my fruit cake recipe. I only had two lemons on hand and my recipe calls for six so I just made 1/3 of the syrup required and it worked great. Here's how I did it:

Wash lemons in hot water to get them clean. You are eating the peel after all.  With a sharp paring knife score the lemon in quarters from top to bottom. That is, score the skin, do not cut through to the flesh.
Working between the score lines pull away the peel. What's left is a lemon with a white membrane holding it together.I had squeezed one of my lemons already and had saved the shells. They were two halves of a lemon, so I just scored the halves once each  and peeled - it worked just fine. I threw away the white membrane.

Cut the strips into long cross wise pieces about 1/4 to 1/8 inch wide. Put the pieces in a sauce pan and generously cover with water. Bring to a boil. Boil for a minute or so then drain the strips, rinse in hot tap water and return the strips to the pan. Repeat this boiling process two more times. Return the strips to the pan and cover with water once more. This only takes a few minutes. Simmer them now for about 20 minutes.

Drain the strips and in the same sauce pan make a syrup of water, sugar and white corn syrup.  My recipe for six lemons called for 1 1/2 cups sugar to 1 1/2 cups water and six tablespoons of corn syrup. Stir the mixture together well and bring to a boil, stir a little more and add the lemon peel. Bring the pan to a strong simmer (bubbly but not a hard boil) and cook until the syrup begins to disappear, about 10 minutes. The longer you cook it the more candied the peel becomes, and harder. It goes fairly quickly so don't leave it unattended. You can stir the mixture from time to time at this point as well.

When the peel was almost boiled down I fished it out of the syrup with a fork and arranged it on a cookie cooling rack with waxed paper under it to catch drips.  The recipe suggests you drop the strips into a bowl of superfine sugar, then lay them out on a rack to dry. That would eliminate the drips. I let mine dry and cool over night and then sugared them. No perticular reason other than I wanted to taste the peel before it was sugared and I needed to let it cool. Just my thing.  I don't think it makes a big difference.

This peel will be great chopped in fruit cake. It's also good just to eat as a candy - provided you like the sweet/bitter combo of lemon peel - which I do. Just like Shaker Lemon Pie!  But that's for another day.