Home-Candied Angelica
Submitted by pieden
Home-candied angelica turns young spring stalks into emerald-green confectionery jewels using just sugar and patience. A traditional British technique for decorating cakes, trifles and Christmas puddings.
YIELD
1 servingsPREP
20 minCOOK
10 minREADY
2 daysCandied angelica is one of those near-forgotten Victorian techniques that turns a humble garden herb into bright green strips used to decorate fruit cakes, trifles and Christmas puddings. The window for making it is narrow. Only the young shoots harvested in April or May are tender enough to candy without turning bitter and woody.
The process is slow but undemanding. After two brief blanches and a peel to remove the fibrous outer threads (the same way you’d string celery), the stalks rest under a heavy blanket of sugar for 2 to 3 days. The sugar pulls moisture from the angelica and creates a thick syrup that, when simmered slowly, replaces the plant’s water with sugar molecule by molecule. That’s what turns the stalks translucent and preserves them.
The oven drying at the lowest possible temperature is what finishes the candy. Aim for tacky-dry, not crackling-hard. Stored properly in an airtight container, candied angelica keeps for months and adds a faintly aromatic, almost juniper-like sweetness to bakes.
Pro Tips
- Pick stalks no thicker than a finger. Anything larger will be stringy no matter how long you cook it.
- Use a heavy-bottomed pan for the final simmer. Thin pans scorch the syrup and dull the green color.
- Don’t skip the rest of 2 to 3 days under sugar. Rushing this step gives you tough, chewy candy instead of soft, jewel-like strips.
Variations
- Add a strip of lemon zest to the final simmer for a brighter citrus edge.
- Dust the dried pieces in superfine sugar for a frosted, glittering finish.
- Dip one end of the candied stalks in melted dark chocolate for petits fours.
Ingredients
Directions
The most important thing about candying angelica is to choose stalks that are young and tender.
In other words, angelica is only worth candying in April or May when the shoots are new and softly coloured.
Trim the young shoots into 3 to 4 inch lengths, put them into a pan, cover with water and bring to a boil.
Drain and scrape away tough skin and fibrous threads with a potato peeler, rather as you might prepare celery.
Return the angelica to the pan, pour on fresh boiling water and cook until green and tender.
If the shoots are as youthful as they should be, this will take 5 minutes or less.
Drain the stalks and dry them.
Put them into a bowl and sprinkle granulated sugar between layers, allowing 1 pound of sugar for every 1 pound of angelica.
Cover and leave for 2 to 3 days.
Slide contents of the bowl into a heavy-based pan.
Bring very slowly to the boil and simmer until the angelica feels perfectly tender and looks clear.
Drain, then roll or toss the shoots on greaseproof paper thickly strewn with sugar, letting the angelica take up as much sugar as will stick to it.
Then dry off the angelica - without letting it become hard - in the oven, using the lowest possible temperature.
I place the stalks directly on the oven shelves (with trays underneath to catch any falling sugar) and find they need about 3 hours.
Wrap and store after cooling completely.
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