Fresh Mandarin oranges (also known as Clementines, Halos, Cuties, etc.) are very popular at Christmastime here. I had too many of them to eat out of hand, so I cast around the internet for a way to use some easily. This recipe fit the bill. I used the one found at Cupcake Project. I don’t have a dehydrator, and am not really interested in a crispy product. That being said, I can’t figure out how I’m going to store these as they are QUITE STICKY. Totally delicious, but QUITE STICKY. Now, I suppose if I were baking some kind of Grand Marnier or orange cake or dessert, I could place these candied Mandarins decoratively on top. But I’m trying to watch what I eat in this quasi-post-holiday season, so instead of using them as a garnish, I am eating these off the paper, several at a time. It’s defeating my purpose, I know. I should never have too much of anything because I feel like I must finish eating it. All of it. Sigh. These are so, so good.

A couple notes . . . the cinnamon flavor is a little bit strong, so next time I might use two cinnamon sticks instead of four. There is a huge amount of leftover syrup, about 3-1/2 cups, what am I going to do with it?

  • Ingredients
  • 8 Mandarin oranges
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 cinnamon sticks

Slice the oranges into about 6 thin slices each one. In a large saucepan stir together water and sugar, bring to a boil. Add the mandarins and cinnamon. Bring to a boil again. Reduce heat. Stirring only occasionally, let it simmer 40 minutes. Using tongs, remove the slices.

Cupcake Project used a cooling rack set over paper to catch the drips. There is a caveat not to let them sit too long on the racks or the racks will get all sticky, hard to clean. I don’t want to deal with my racks like that, so instead I placed a sheet of wax paper over my racks. Later in the day I used the tongs to turn each slice over. The next day I moved the slices to a new sheet of wax paper. Later that day I turned them over. Note that I was taste-testing them frequently throughout. Ha. The next day I changed the wax paper again. An option for storage would be to dredge each slice through granulated or sanding sugar, but I think I’ll simply layer them between sheets of wax paper. That should work to keep them from sticking to each other.

As I said earlier there’s a lot of leftover syrup. You could make a second batch in the same syrup, that would be super good. I poured my leftover syrup in jars and plan to use as a sweetener for salad dressing or pancake syrup or cocktail syrup. It would taste pretty good to sweeten tea, too.