Camilla Wynne's candied fruit stands out on its own and it can bedazzle cakes and pies

It's too bad that the words "candied" and "fruit," when put together, cause so much dismay from eaters who have never experienced the absolute gorgeous luxury that is beautifully candied fruit. The hard, flavorless red and green chunks you see in most fruitcakes are not it. Camilla Wynne aims to change our association with these jewel-like beauties in her magnificent book, Nature's Candy: Timeless and Inventive Recipes for Creating and Baking with Candied Fruit. It's a deep dive into making the most beautiful candied confections and it's perfect for anyone who wants to learn the ancient craft of preserving fruit.

Evan Kleiman: I feel really lucky to have eaten candied fruit at the highest level from the oldest artisan confectionery in Italy, a company that's been in business since the mid-1700s. Can you explain the difference between candied fruit at that level vs. what we get in a bad fruitcake?

Camilla Wynne: Oftentimes, in a bad fruitcake, if you flip it over and look at the ingredient list, it's actually candied turnip in large part, instead of fruit. So there's that to begin with. But it's been so treated as to render it totally flavorless. It's essentially bleached with sulfites and then they have to add back both the color and flavoring sometimes because that treatment totally rids it of the character of the original fruit. 

Whereas, when we're talking about artisanal confectioners all over the world, what they're doing, it's night and day. They're treating the fruit carefully, gently. They're not adding any additives. It's a really slow process of replacing the water in the cells of the fruit with sugar so that it can be preserved indefinitely at room temperature.

Because that's the whole thing. Water breeds bacteria and sugar preserves.

Exactly. Bacteria and mold are just like us, they need water to live. And fruit is 75% water. So in order to have fruit be shelf-stable at room temperature without putting it in a jar or doing anything else like that, that water has to be removed either through drying or through the process of candying.

There's an image in the book of candied chilies, maybe they're jalapenos, red and green. They almost don't seem real. The way the sugar has infused the cells makes them translucent and glowing. Is watching this transformation happen part of the appeal of learning how to do it?

Oh, to me, it is 100%. I think nowadays, there's so much focus on just getting dinner on the table, and I get it totally, I have a toddler. But I think there's something so special about making candied fruit because it's not difficult, the process. You're just simmering fruit, depending on the method, for however long, often over a period of several days, and witnessing that transformation. 

I find it almost meditative, and it's a privilege to witness the transformation of something from the natural world, from fruit, which is beautiful in its own right but it really turns into a jewel. Translucency is the exact word that describes it. With the peppers, in particular, you can see the seeds inside and everything. It's like having X-ray vision. It's a really beautiful thing to behold.

"I find it almost meditative, and it's a privilege to witness the transformation of something from the natural world," says Camilla Wynne of preserving fruit. Photo by Mickaël A. Bandassak.

When we think about candying whole fruits — and I've had the experience of eating a whole nectarine and a whole pear, just mind-blowingly amazing — we're talking about a process that is ancient, aren't we? Who figured out how to do this?

It was a really, really long time ago. We're talking about ancient China and ancient Rome. Unclear on who thought of it first but ancient civilizations came up with this originally in honey, because they didn't figure out how to refine sugar until 350 BC in India. But in ancient China, fruits had seasons, and those seasons were often not particularly long. In a bid to conserve these fruits, since they didn't have refrigeration, they tried packing them into clay vessels and covering them with honey. And then they realized that when they then cooked that, all of a sudden they'd created something new and delicious that also had a shelf life.

"Nature's Candy: Timeless and Inventive Recipes for Creating and Baking with Candied Fruit" explores the ancient craft of preservation. Photo courtesy of Appetite by Random House.

What is the role of glucose in candy and fruit? What is it and why are we using it?

We always add glucose. If I can get my hands on it, pure glucose but light corn syrup works in a pinch as well. We're adding that in order to prevent crystallization. We're simmering the fruit in a syrup and that syrup gets really concentrated. It's water and sugar, sugar and solution. Sugar loves water, so it's happy to get into a solution, but ultimately it loves itself more. It's always trying to get back to its crystalline state. So the less water molecules there are to keep those sugar molecules apart, the closer they are, the more they're ready to turn into crystals. And, of course, we don't want stalactite-like formations of crystals growing all over our candied fruit, so you always add an invert sugar, which acts as a preventative to the sugar.

I can kind of wrap my mind around how to candy citrus peels. I understand that. Softer fruit, I find it hard to understand. Fruit in particular, like strawberries and raspberries, is there a different technique you have to use because the minute they hit hot water, it seems like they would just fall apart.

The typical candying methods that we see are only suitable for fruits that are fairly firm-fleshed. The best candidates tend to be peel and ginger then kiwi, pineapple, quince. Strawberries, as long as they're not over ripe, do pretty well although you have to treat them a little more gently. But, of course, if you add something like raspberries into a simmering sugar syrup, they're just gonna explode, and you're gonna get a raspberry sauce, ultimately.

I still wanted to candy them, so I used a method that I learned in fine dining in Montreal, in 2003 or so. We would pour a hot, simple syrup over fragile fruits, like supreme citrus fruits or mulberries, that sort of thing. It doesn't prolong their lifespan indefinitely. We would treat them this way to keep them for a week or more in the refrigerator for plated desserts. But after that bath in the sugar, if you dry them out, the result is essentially like a candied grapefruit supreme or a candied raspberry.

Is it possible to candy vegetables?

Oh, sure. There are a couple of recipes in the book. I candy carrots for my Morning Glory Granola. My friend, she contributed a recipe for Spicy Strawberry Margarita Cookies that have candied jalapenos in them. My friend Natasha has even candied mushrooms before. And those fruitcakes are made of candied turnips, too.

That's amazing. Once we get into making them, are we adding flavors? Are we using spices? What are a couple of pairings that you love?

Yeah, that's an opportunity that a lot of people miss when they're candying fruit. You can create something incredible in the same way that you might flavor a chocolate truffle to make it taste like a cocktail. You can do that with candied fruit too except that it's vegan, so it's suitable for all diets, and it's got natural fiber in it as well. I really love doing candied pineapple with some lime zest and juice. I add some allspice, maybe a cinnamon stick, an árbol chile to give it some Mexican flavors. Then, when it's done candying, I throw in a big glug of mezcal, let it sit overnight, and I dry it out. Once it's just tacky, I roll it in a sugar that's mixed with a little bit of flaky salt, chili flakes, and citric acid to give it that fresh fruit acidity. It's a candy like you've never tried before. It's really, really cool.

Let's use the stuff now. Can you reel off some of the ways to use it aside from making a truly edible fruitcake?

I have traditionally used candied fruit in all the ways you would expect over the holidays, like making fruitcake and Christmas pudding, half-British, or making cassata in the springtime, things like that. 

I know people have those family recipes for those kinds of celebration foods, so I wanted in the second half of my book to show the ways you can use candied fruit where you might not expect it. I like to put candied orange peel in my oatmeal cookies, for instance, or candied grapefruit madeleines that are dipped in the hot candying syrup to give them an incredible moistness. I even candy a whole hollowed out orange and fill it with frozen yogurt and top it with a granita made of the candying syrup, Aperol, and orange juice.

Morning Glory Granola contains candied carrots and pineapple, currants, pecans, millet, seeds, and spices. Photo by Mickaël A. Bandassak.

One of the things that was really appealing to me was how you use the byproduct, which is all this syrup. That olive oil orange cake looks so delicious.

I really regret not doing a photo of that. When I was planning the photos, I thought, "It's just a plain cake." But I know we eat with our eyes and that cake, it does look plain, sort of. It's a vibrant, bright yellow orange, and it is one of my favorite recipes in the book. I hope people still make it despite the lack of photo.

A chiffon Nesselrode pie contains candied fruit, booze, and often chestnut. Photo by Mickaël A. Bandassak.

What if, after listening to all this, we have a yen to play with candied fruit. Are there sources of good quality candied fruit that we can buy?

Depending on your income, you have greater or lesser access to them. I think the amarena cherries made by Fabbri and Luxardo are of such high quality that I very, very rarely will candy cherries myself. I just use those. Same with Fabbri's candied strawberries. Candied ginger tends to be really great quality as well that we can access. Otherwise, you can order whole artisanal candied fruits from French confectioners like Lilamand or from Italian confectioners as well. There is that possibility, too.

After spending all day with your book, I went on to the Romanengo site in Italy. I was like if I want to pay 100 euros in shipping, but you can get a lot of Christmas presents for people. It is an absolutely gorgeous book. Thank you so much. Camilla,

Thank you so much. I loved talking to you.