Egypt: Spiced Oranges {Around the World in 12 Dishes}

Last week we shared our version of the Egyptian Raspberry Lemon Cooler, as part of the series Around the World in 12 Dishes.  Today we share the second dish we tried from Egypt: Spiced Oranges.

I chose this recipe because I thought it was something Monkey would try, but also for nostalgic reasons.  When I was young, we had an international cookbook for kids (hmm, it all started back then!), and one of the recipes was for spiced oranges.  I don’t recall which country the recipe was from, although I believe it was in North Africa.  Who knows, maybe it was even Egypt!

The recipe was even simpler than the one we did here – it mainly involved sprinkling cinnamon (and possibly lemon juice?) on sliced oranges – but I remember I was very proud to take what I had made to an event at my school.

To recreate this dish, Monkey and I followed closely this recipe I found on an Egyptian tourism website.  First, we made a simple syrup, simmered it with raisins and spices, and left it to cool.  I love how the raisins plumped up with all that sweet, spicy goodness.

Then we stirred the syrup into the sliced oranges and chilled the mixture for several hours.

Heavenly!  I thought the oranges were wonderful, although I was the only one who tried them.  Oh well, more for me!

The website recommends serving the oranges with cake, and I can imagine that the spiced syrup would just soak right into a pound cake, so I want to try that someday.  But this time I mainly enjoyed them stirred into plain Greek yogurt – mmm!

Check out the other participating blogs to see what they have been cooking up:

Adventures In Mommydom, All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Creative Family Fun, Creative World of Varya, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids’ Makings, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Hands-On Homeschooler

If you try a dish from Egypt, we’d love to hear about it! You can also link up your dish or craft here to share your post on all the participating blogs: