Tangerine LifeSavers, Unwrapped

As we head deeper into the holiday season, (This weekend is the annual caroling party.) I thought it was a good time to trot out some more Christmas-y foods to keep my eyes on the prize as things start to get a bit crazier. And they will get crazier. After several years of freelancing, this is the first holiday season in a while that I’ve had a full-time job, so time will be a bit shorter.

But the pleasures can still be huge. Take ice cream, for example.

After last week’s stocking stuffer, candy cane ice cream, I didn’t have to look too far to find my next source of holiday inspiration. When I was a boy (in other words,  until I got married), it was always a treat to reach into the bottom of my stocking and find two or three tangerines. That was back when the availability of fruit was determined by the season and you could only get great citrus in the winter.

Since tangerines, or clementines, have so many seeds, I tend to eat a lot more navel oranges, but tangerine has long been my favorite citrus flavor.

I remember when LifeSavers first came out with a tangerine flavor. It was incredible. After eating cherry, orange and grape* flavored candy that never tasted like any fruit I’d ever had, tangerine LifeSavers were a revelation. It was just like the fruit except that the flavor lasted longer and there were no seeds.

Since then there have been a lot of advances in candy flavoring and Jellybelly jelly beans are available  in every flavor you can imagine, but that first taste of tangerine candy still sticks in my mind.

The challenge was in recreating that flavor myself. It’s a lot easier than making candy but I wasn’t sure my love of tangerines was universal.

I looked at several stores to find tangerine juice and found a mixed bag of knock-offs, but not the real thing. The closest thing I found was an orange/tangerine hybrid, the worst was a tangerine juice blend. I won’t mention the brands here but only because don’t remember them. Then I went to Trader Joe’s, sure that they would have the right thing for me, especially given the season. They did not.

In the end, I just bought two 3 pound bags of tangerines, brought them home and squeezed them. The seeds were a bit of a problem as they were small enough to slip through the juice filter, but they didn’t make it through my china cap (a fancier filter).  So I got the fresh tangerine juice I needed and my family got a delicious new flavor or sorbet. A win for everyone.

I’d better be careful, though. As expectations for my frozen desserts go up, I’ll be forced to make something really good for Christmas.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

*When I tasted some Concord grapes, I finally discovered where the “grape” flavor of candy came from, but that was not something we ever had out west.

Tangerine Sorbet

(about 1 quarts)
1 ½ cups water
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups tangerine juice

1. Combine the water and sugar in a sauce pan, heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then cool. This is your simple syrup.
2. Combine the simple syrup with the tangerine (I couldn’t find any juice in the store so I squeezed a couple of bags worth).
3. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream freezer for about 35 minutes.
4. Put the now frozen sorbet into the freezer for a couple of hours to give it a chance to firm up.

NOTE:     When freezing ice cream, you need to use an ice cream freezer to ensure that a certain amount of air is mixed into the frozen cream. This gives it a lighter, less icy consistency. When freezing sorbet, you may also freeze it in a popsicle mold, a bowl or on a sheet pan. Be sure to stir the mixture occasionally to limit the size of the ice particles. Larger chunks of ice make for granita, miniscule chunks make for a nice smooth sorbet (an ice cream freezer is ideal).

Photo Credit: “Tangerine Lifesavers, Unwrapped,” stolen from the Internet by the author. 

There is still something exotic about tangerines. They’re little bite-sized fruits that only come around once a year. The names clementines, satsumas and mandarins all seem so foreign compared to standbys like apple, orange, pear and grape. They also have a highly volatile oil in their skin which I enjoyed during my ‘pyro’ phase. What tangerine dreams do you still have? Let me know in a comment.