Name: Chocolate Covered Oranges
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 2 Mandarin oranges; 100 g dark chocolate

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Have you ever tried chocolate covered oranges? If you have, I am sure I don’t need to explain further. But if you have not, you’ve got to try these!

These chocolate covered oranges make such delightful treats that are not only super delicious, but healthy too! After all, it only takes 2 ingredients to make these and that is the orange and dark chocolate. Easy right?

I made these for the first time over the last weekend for a quick afternoon snack. I had quite a number of mandarin oranges at home and wanted to fix a quick treat. So the oranges came in really handy.

Chocolate dipped orange segments on a green rectangle plate against a white wood background — Chocolate Covered Oranges - Quick & Easy Sweet Treats

Mandarin oranges are available in abundance during Chinese New Year time of year. Though I don’t directly celebrate the festival, I always get lots of mandarin oranges from friends and neighbors who celebrate.

And since the New Year was just 2 weeks ago, I still had plenty of these oranges at home. It was a perfect opportunity for me to try out these chocolate covered oranges.

You can make the chocolate covered orange with other types oranges too, though the ones that are easily separated by segments such as these Mandarin oranges are generally easier to work with.

How to Choose the Best Chocolate for Chocolate Covered Fruits
How to Make
Notes
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Recipe (Printable)

How to Choose the Best Chocolate for Chocolate Covered Fruits

Now, making these healthy treat is not rocket science. After all, how difficult can it be to dip something in chocolate?

But here’s the thing. Working with chocolate is not always easy, especially if you live in a hot climate country like Malaysia. The last couple of weeks has been extremely hot here, with day time temperature reaching up to 35 degrees Celsius. In this sort of temperature, working with chocolate is almost impossible unless the room is air-conditioned. Even then, once the chocolate is brought out to room temperature, it becomes totally helpless to the heat.

And so, instead of using normal chocolate, I used compound chocolate. It is so much more stable with heat and was therefore the only one I could use.

If heat is not a problem for you, then, by all means, choose the best quality chocolate (rich dark chocolate) you can get because it really makes a difference to these treats.

And I specifically chose dark chocolate over white chocolate and milk chocolate options as it works best for these chocolate covered oranges, at least for me.

Chocolate dipped orange segments on a wire rack — Chocolate covered orange pieces - Easy dessert recipe

How to Make

Ingredients

Oranges
Dark chocolate bar or dark chocolate chips

Tempering (Melting) the Chocolate

To temper or melt chocolate, you can use either the double boiler method on a stove or do it in the microwave.
To double boil, chop chocolate bar into small pieces for quick melting. If using chocolate chips, no need to chop them. Place the chocolate in a heat proof bowl and place it over pan of water (make sure the bowl does not touch the water). Turn on the heat and let the steam from the water heat up the bowl and melt the chocolate. Stir to ensure all the chocolate is completely melted before removing from heat.
To use the microwave, chop chocolate into small pieces and place in a microwave safe bowl. Heat it up at short 20 to 30-second intervals on medium high. Check at each interval by stirring the chocolate with a spoon.

Dipping the Orange Slices

Peel the oranges, and divide them into segments. Remove as much of the white thread on the segments as possible.
Place a wire rack on top of a large plate.
Cut parchment paper into small squares, large enough to fit one orange segment each.
Once the chocolate has cooled slightly, hold one orange segment at one end and dip half of each orange slice into the melted chocolate as much as possible. Ideally, you should attempt to at least dip half of each orange segment.
Lift the chocolate dipped orange segment off the chocolate and place it on the prepared wire rack. Let any excess chocolate drip onto the plate.
Once you are done dipping all the orange segments, transfer them onto the cut parchment paper pieces and refrigerate for a few minutes until the chocolate coating sets.
Remove from fridge, peel the piece of parchment paper of the orange segments and place the fruits on a serving plate to serve.

Notes

Here are a couple of noteworthy points in making these chocolate covered oranges:

Type of oranges

I chose Mandarin oranges over other oranges because Mandarin oranges are so much easier to peel the skin by hand.
It is also so much easier to separate the segments without the walls leaking, unlike normal oranges where the skin is not so easily peel-able, and it is also hard to separate the segments inside without breaking the walls that surround the juice pulps inside.
For best results, use fresh oranges.

Seedless fruits are the best

Making sure the oranges are seedless is another important point. It’s so much nicer to be able to pop one whole orange segments into the mouth and chew without having to worry about chewing into orange seeds.

Peeling and preparing the oranges for dipping

In peeling the oranges and separating the segments, take extra care not to break the walls that hold the juice pulps.
Even the slightest hole can result in the juice of the orange to leak. And dipping these segments not only becomes harder as the juice makes them slippery and hard to hold when dipping into chocolate, it is also a messy affair.
Also, when peeling the oranges, remove every bit of the white threads of the skin on the segments. This is so that the oranges look clean and neat.

Use wire racks and parchment paper

Immediately after dipping, place the oranges on a wire rack. This will allow excess chocolate to drip down and not create a pool of chocolate around the chocolate-dipped slices.
Once the excess chocolate has mostly dripped off, the chocolate covered orange can be transferred onto parchment paper. Parchment paper peels off easily from chocolate and therefore, is most convenient to use.
Once the chocolate has set, peel the paper off and arrange in a serving tray without a mess.

Chilling the chocolate covered oranges

Place freshly dipped orange slices in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. The short period of refrigerating helps the chocolate set. Do not leave the fruits too long in the refrigerator.
This will result in condensation on the fruits and chocolate once removed from the fridge. If you are using compound chocolate, the ‘sweat’ will not cause the chocolate to melt. But it is definitely not appetizing to see speckles of water all over the chocolate and the oranges.

Best chocolate to use in hot and humid climates

If you live and a hot and humid country like me, compound chocolate would work better than normal chocolate.
It is so much more stable and does not melt off in a hot climate.

Best method for easy dipping of the fruits

Fill the melted chocolate into a narrow and deep drinking glass-like container (heatproof). This makes it easier to dip the oranges slices as compared to a wide bowl.
If you don’t have any suitable deep container, use a spoon to pour the chocolate over each slice while holding them with the other hand.
Shake excess off and place the slices on a wire rack.

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Recipe (Printable)

Here is the full printable recipe card for my chocolate covered oranges: