Candied ginger is easy, and you can adjust the 'heat' of it to your taste. The hardest part (mostly boring) is peeling and chopping the ginger. Fresh ginger fingers (I start with about 1.5 pounds, it ends up being ~1 lb chopped) Sugar equal in weight to the ginger Enough water to cover the ginger and sugar More sugar - 'caster' or 'bakers' sugar, finely granulated, is very nice. You can make your own by whizzing granulated in a food processor. Use about 1 lb - most of it will be still there when you're done. Peel the ginger with the side of a teaspoon (perfectly ordinary spoon). Break/chop off and throw away any dry/overly fibrous bits. Break off fingers to get the smoothest lumps for peeling. Cut up your peeled ginger into sizes you like - if the ginger is relatively old and woody, I cut it very small (lentil/split pea sized); if it's relatively fresh and young, pieces about the size of my little finger tip. Absorbency is the key here. If you like it hot, go on to the sugar section. If you like it relatively mild, put the ginger in a saucepan, cover it with water and bring to a boil. Pour off the water (save it, that's ginger tea!). Repeat if desired - up to three boils (that will make very mild ginger). Put the chopped ginger in a saucepan, put in the sugar (equal in weight to the chopped ginger), add water until the ginger pieces are just floating or completely covered (mine usually float). Bring to a boil, reduce to low/medium and simmer until syrup is reduced and ginger is translucent brown - 1/2 hour to 3 hours, no idea what the difference is (not temperature, not amount of ginger, not age of ginger...). Put the caster sugar in a shallow bowl/pan (I use a quiche pan), a layer about 1/2 inch-1 inch thick. Use a skimmer to remove the ginger pieces from the syrup and drop them into the sugar; stir the sugar and ginger with a spoon in between dropping skimmers-full to cover the syrupy ginger with the sugar. When all the ginger is in the sugar, pour off the syrup (again, save it - yummy in ginger cookies, as sweetener for tea/coffee...canning jar works well.) and let the ginger cool in the sugar. About an hour later or when cool, put it into a jar or tin, shaking off as much sugar as possible (a sieve helps). There will be bits that are just ginger syrup in sugar - also yummy - and the sugar will be mildly gingery from bits too small to separate out. Save it to use for your next batch of ginger, or...how about in the shortbread? BTW - my syrup usually hardens - I get it too hot and it gets to firm or hard ball. I pour it out onto parchment, let it cool, then break it up and put it in a jar. Still lovely for sweetening stuff - smoothies! It takes a while, and your fingers will likely be sore from peeling the ginger for a bit. It's _easier_ to buy it from KA (or Trader Joes, or whoever). But it's fun to make it yourself and you can adjust the heat of the ginger to your liking (I do one or two boils depending on the age of the ginger - younger gets two). I am absolutely going to make this. I make my own homemade ginger syrup all the time - this is just a few more steps. Thanks so much for taking the time to post this! Have you considered posting it to our community? PJH

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