You might have seen candied fruit around lately—glistening, vibrant, almost otherworldly. You’ll spot it arranged atop decorated desserts from new-wave pastry chefs, adorning sculptural centerpieces at fashionable parties, and embellishing the social media profiles of your favorite aesthetically minded food creators.
The labor-intensive curiosity, long relegated to fruitcake and other traditional sweets, is making a glittering comeback. What is it about this old-school confection that so captures our imaginations? “Candied fruit is translucent,” explains Camilla Wynne, author of Nature’s Candy—a magical effect that evokes gemstones, blown glass, or, Wynne’s preferred comparison, glowing jellyfish.
But it’s not just the look that’s precious: “There’s something amazing about the fact that you can prolong the lifespan of fruit,” she says, “just by replacing its water content with sugar.” The process is arduous, spanning days or weeks of boiling and soaking in syrup, but when sugar properly penetrates fruit’s cellular structure, not only does the appearance become almost incandescent, but the microbes that cause spoilage can’t survive.
