How to Make Candied Lemons

I’ve always lived between this place of very utilitarian and luxuriously. It’s a funny place to live, like a man made limbo where a game of tug-o-war never ends. The good thing about these comical living conditions is that they keep each other balanced. The other is always trying to help find a reasonable way that the other can achieve what it needs to be. 

When I had a pile of lemons on their last leg, the utilitarian part of me was desperately trying to find something useful that could be done with them. The luxurious part of me would have been happy to toss the waning lemons. In an effort to compromise, I made candied lemons. Candied lemons look like little pieces of stained glass, catching the essence of summer. When you hold a candied lemon up to the light, you can almost smell the breeze of summer and feel the heat of the summer sun on your face.

Candied lemons take a little while to make and they look so troublesome. I can tell you that they are very easy and despite taking some time on the stove, the actual work you do will be very little. You don’t have to stand at the stove stirring and mixing. I set the timer and grabbed my phone and scrolled Instagram while the lemons did their thing in the pot. Before I knew it, the lemons were done. 

One of the biggest things I have done to make recipes easier for me, is to read through the entire thing beforehand and again right before I start making it. It might sound like an obvious way of doing things, but I can’t tell you how many recipes I was halfway through before I realized I hadn’t even read the instructions: hello, puff pastry. 

Candied lemons can be used to dip in chocolate, garnish cocktails and other drinks, garnish desserts, make an extra fancy lemon sugar or just capture summer because now you can. Sometimes, it’s just fun to see that you can do something even if you never do anything with it. So, run to the kitchen and go have some fun making candied lemons!