Chocolate-Covered Candied Oranges

When I was a kid, one of my favorite parts of Christmas (and Annalise's too, as I recall) was getting one of those foil-covered chocolate "oranges" that divide into neat little segments in my stocking.  This is like that, all grown up.  Super easy, although the oranges need to dry for at least 6 hours, so plan ahead.

Ingredients: 

2 oranges

about .6 lb dark chocolate

Sea salt

1 cup sugar 

2 cups water

Equipment: 

A bain-marie or some way of suspending a bowl over boiling water.  

1.  Slice your oranges into thin rounds.  They DON'T need to be paper thin; my thicker slices did a better job being dipped in chocolate.

2.  Get the sugar and water boiling.  When they come to a boil, add the orange slices, then reduce the heat as low as possible; cover pot with a towel or sheet of parchment paper; and leave for an hour and a half.  

3.  Remove the oranges from a slotted spoon and let them dry on parchment paper overnight or for at least 6 hours (I did overnight).  They will still be a bit tacky and won't be completely hard, but they should be solid enough to withstand dipping in chocolate. 

4.  Cut the orange rounds in half.  Melt the chocolate in the bain-marie or bowl-atop-saucepan.  Dip each slice in the chocolate, then sprinkle with sea salt.  Place on waxed paper and allow chocolate to harden.

White Chocolate Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

March sings of Easter candy, of white chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs. I loved Easter as a kid, probably, as Mommy Blogger pointed out today, because a typical nasty Wyoming snowstorm makes pastel bunnies perched on a typical Wyoming Walmart shelf seem more darling than they really are.

To avoid artificial crap and get the most out of my sugar highs, I decided to do some Easter candy makin' myself, inspired by Averie's sweets on loveveggiesandyoga. This is not fancy, and doesn't even really count as homemade since I still relied on store-bought white chocolate. It does eliminate the weird non-peanut butter stuff in peanut butter fillings, though. Averie's base recipe with slight modifications below.

Melt 1 bag of white chocolate chips (I lurve Trader Joe's variety). Line a six tin muffin pan with muffin liners. Pour white chocolate into the liners, coating the bottom. Set aside the rest of the chocolate; you may have to heat it up again.

Mix 1/4 cup natural peanut butter with a scant 1 T of dark chocolate cocoa powder, 2 Ts of maple syrup or agave, and vanilla extract + sea salt to taste.

Spoon filling into the muffin tins, then pour more white chocolate over the top. Make sure the filling doesn't touch the edges of its chocolate base, you want the two layers of white chocolate to meet and meld and crinkle.

Freeze to set the chocolate, then store at room temperature.