ASMA KHALID, HOST:
It's the season to serve fruitcake. For many, that is a very unpopular Christmas dessert choice. If you're among the many fruit cake haters out there, a Canadian cookbook author is here to change your mind about the oft-maligned Christmas delicacy. NPR's Neda Ulaby spoke with her.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Camilla Wynne gets it. She knows why fruit cake is so fractious.
CAMILLA WYNNE: (Laughter) I think it's because there's a lot of terrible candied fruit out there.
ULABY: Yuck, those sticky, gunky globs of...
WYNNE: ...Unspecified little colored bits, bright red or bright green glace cherries - they aren't representative of candied fruit generally.
ULABY: Really good candied fruit is the difference between excellent and awful fruit cakes, says Camilla Wynne, who is not just a candied fruit ambassador.
(SOUNDBITE OF SUNSET RUBDOWN SONG, "CANDLES")
ULABY: She plays in a rock band. She's a pastry chef trained in Montreal. And she's a master fruit preserver who's written an acclaimed cookbook about jam. Right now, I'm listening to the latest album by her band, Sunset Rubdown, and leafing through her new cookbook, "Nature's Candy." But here's the thing - to make the recipes, Wynne wants me to candy my own fruit. I told her, I'm sorry, but that's really way too much to ask.
WYNNE: Oh, I hate that you are intimidated. That's, like, the last thing I want. People are, I understand that.
ULABY: It's time-intensive. It seems very messy.
WYNNE: Very is definitely not true. Slightly messy.
ULABY: I do not have a candy thermometer.
WYNNE: Oh, you don't need one.
ULABY: OK, Camilla Wynne is wearing me down. So I start doing what she says. I am peeling oranges, boiling the peels, then simmering them in equal parts sugar and water. Hopefully, this works.
WYNNE: You just look at the bubbles. No problem. Think about, like, a concert or something. If they're kind of just grooving, that's good. You don't want them to be like, moshing. You just want, like, a steady groove.
ULABY: Cue a steady groove from Camilla Wynne's band, Sunset Rubdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF SUNSET RUBDOWN SONG, "IDIOT HEART")
ULABY: I have to admit that candying fruit is not as hard as I feared. It's cool teas up orange peels I would normally throw away. It took a few days for the peels to dry, but they turned out so pretty. They glisten. They look far more luxurious than candied fruit, even from gourmet grocery stores.
WYNNE: It's one of the most ancient methods of preservation. It's been around since, like, ancient China and ancient Rome.
ULABY: The fruitcake recipes in "Nature's Candy" - Camilla Wynne's new cookbook - honestly sound delicious. They encourage you to candy kumquats, cactus pears and kiwis. But "Nature's Candy" also includes non-fruitcake treats like caramel corn with candied ginger and sugar cookies with candied jalapenos.
WYNNE: You get all this jalapeno syrup with it, too, and it makes a really good base for a margarita if you're into that kind of thing.
ULABY: Back in the lockdown days of the pandemic, many home cooks turned to baking bread. Candying your own fruit is similar, says Camilla Wynne. It scales up a sense of satisfaction and contemplation in the kitchen.
WYNNE: Unwind, distress, connect to beauty kind of. The world's, like, a bit nuts.
ULABY: And what goes better with nuts than candied fruit?
Neda Ulaby, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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