Glacé ... Preparation Time: 22 Days!
What we're talking about here is glacé fruits. (Around here, glacé is the best defense against fresh fruit.***) There is really not that much actual kitchen time, but the process requires some days of waiting.
Our favorite is glacé pineapple pieces. When you're finished you'll have a whole batch of delicious, sweet, toothsome, deep flavor morsels to make a world class banana split, dice into a trifle, for fruitcake, or just to reach into the the refrigerator to snack when a little sweetness is what the doctor orders.
There's no comparison to the excellence of the flavor of your own home made glacé fruits. Go for it. (Or, you can pay through the nose and have someone you'll never ever know in some factory you don't know where to do the work for you.)
Glacé Fruits
Ingredients:
1 pound of fruit
4-1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of corn syrup
Instructions:
Prepare the fruit: Pit cherries and prick them with a pin to allow the syrup to penetrate the skin; peel core and quarter or slice apples, apricots, plums, pears, peaches; peel and core pineapple and cut it into rings or cubes; slice citrus fruits thinly (no need to peel them).
Place the fruit in the bottom of a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer gently until almost tender. Cook the fruit in batches, if necessary. Lift the fruit out with a slotted spoon and place in a shallow dish. Pour out all but 1 cup of the cooking water (or add enough to make 1 cup), add 1/2 cup of sugar and the corn syrup. Heat it to dissolve the sugar, bring to a boil, and pour over the fruit to cover. Leave it overnight.
Next day, pour the syrup into a pan, add a half-cup of sugar, heat to dissolve, bring to a boil, pour over the fruit and leave overnight. Repeat again for the next five days. On the next day, pour the syrup into a pan, add the half-cup of sugar, and boil, then reduce the heat, add the fruit and cook gently for three minutes. Pour the fruit and syrup into the dish and leave it to soak for two days. Repeat once more. At this point, the syrup should look like runny honey. Leave the fruit to soak for 10 days to three weeks and take a vacation!
At the end of the soaking period, remove the fruit from the syrup and arrange it on a wire rack over a tray. Dry in a warm place, in the oven at the lowest setting, or in a dehydrator until the surface no longer feels sticky.
If you haven’t done enough work by this point, you can also plunge each piece of fruit into boiling water for an instant and roll it in granulated sugar to coat the surface. Store in an airtight canister, tin, or jar in a cool, dark place.
***Self-defense against fresh fruit . . .
