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| Brandied oranges with vanilla ice cream |
Last night being Sunday night, we were looking for a dessert to go with Alvin from Masterchef's caramelised pork belly recipe. Thankfully, the Women's Weekly Cooking Class Cookbook came to the rescue with the recipe for Brandied Oranges (p. 96).
The upside to this recipe is that it's one of the easiest recipes I have ever, ever made. The downside is that there's lots of messy and time consuming preparation work. The results however are delicious. Here's the ingredients:
8 oranges
1 1/2 cups of water
1 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup of brandy
1/2 jigger of Cointreau or Grand Marnier (I used Grand Marnier)
Now, this is where I broke with following the recipe and went my own way.
- First of all, combine in a saucepan 1 1/2 cup of water and 1 cup of caster sugar. Stir until dissolved while bringing to the boil. Once the mixture has boiled, take off the heat and leave to cool.
- While the sugar syrup is cooling, use a sharp knife to peel the oranges down to the flesh, removing all the rind and pith on the oranges. Don't be afraid to cut deep and clean up any remaining pith. Make sure you peel the oranges over the bowl so as to save all the juice. They should end up looking something like the oranges below:
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| 8 peeled oranges |
- Now, cut the oranges along the white membranes and separate them into segments. The real fiddly bit is taking off all the membrane around the segments so that you're left with the beautiful, soft flesh. Again, make sure that you segment the oranges over the bowl so that all the juice is collected in the bowl.
- By now, the sugar syrup should have cooled down, so now is the time to add the brandy and orange liqueur and stir until combine. Have a taste to make sure it's OK!
- Finally, pour the sugar syrup into the bowl of oranges and stir gently to combine. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate until ready.
To serve, spoon the orange segments and the syrup into serving bowls or glasses and top with a good quality vanilla ice-cream or whipped cream and serve. I can really see myself making this for summer BBQs and easy weekend dinners.
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| The finished product! |
What can I say. It was delicious!
ReplyDeleteI have lots of oranges at home and I don't know what to do with them. Might have to do this!
ReplyDeleteShellie, Thanks for the comment. This recipe is dead easy to do and can be done in advance of serving, which makes this ideal. The warmer weather will soon make chilled fruit desserts a delicious option again for dinners or BBQs. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteWoah - brandied oranges to almost exactly this recipe were a family favourite when I was growing up! The recipe came from the Cordon Bleu magazine/box set (one a week for 26 weeks kind-of-thing) from the very early 1970's. We have them now - they are a hilarious time capsule...
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