Making Candied Kumquats

 

  Today I ventured into the kitchen. I do this as little as possible as cooking absolutely terrifies me. However, I promised myself I’d make candied kumquats from my current kumquatious bounty, so make them I did.

  Finding a recipe was easy. Third result from the top on Google Search was this site and recipe. Four ingredients? One of them water? I think I can handle this.

 It was a rather straight forward process, although I had to rush out in the night to buy a candy thermometer. I’ve never made any kind of candy before, so this was new, and my sister scared me with warnings about the temperature having to be absolutely perfect in order to get the sticky sugary stuff to the soft ball stage- or whatever. She really did frighten me, so I spent the entire lengthy trip from lukewarm to 238 degrees F with my head in my hands and my elbows glued to the counter; staring at the little blue line on the thermometer that seemed to move at a rate of 1 cm every 30 minutes.

 For all that, they seemed to come out all right. Many people serve candied kumquats with meat- like chicken or ham, but I enjoy eating them right out of hand for a sugary sticky goodness with a sharp bite at the end. Om Nom Nom Nom…

 There are other great kumquatiatory recipes out there, including a page on KumquatGrowers.com that includes tasty names such as Kumquat Oat Meal Cookies, Kumquat Pound Cake, Hawaiian Chicken /w Kumquat, and many others!