Fancy Pants Grapefruit

Hosting any brunches or showers this summer? This recipe for grapefruit with burnt sugar can be whipped up a few different ways, depending on how many guests you’re expecting.

I am completely in love with how this recipe looks—the amber shards are stunning with the pink grapefruit. And by the way, I would really love it if someone would make me a dress inspired by this color combo…okay? (As Ron Swanson would say, please and thank you.)

The best part about this recipe? For how impressive it looks, it takes very little effort to make it so. You can put this together in about 10, 15 minutes tops. Oh, and it tastes pretty good, too.

Enjoy!
M

Fancy Pants Grapefruit
Two Servings (or more), Breakfast | Gluten-Free, Vegan
Ready in: 15 minutes

Ingredients:
1 grapefruit
2 tablespoons raw sugar

NOTE about the number of servings: If you’re serving each person a half of a grapefruit, obviously each one will serve two people. If you’re slicing them up to serve as part of a buffet for a larger group, one grapefruit will serve about four to five people. So, just do the math with the above amounts to figure out what you’ll need to accommodate the number of guests at your gathering.

Directions:
1. Have a dinner plate handy. I’ll tell you why in a few…
2. Place a piece of tin foil in a medium skillet over medium heat, allowing an inch or two to hang outside of the pan. (You’ll use this to pull the tin foil onto the plate when the sugar is melted.) Make sure the tin foil is lying flat, and wait to turn the heat on until the tin foil is positioned correctly.

NOTE: Technically you can do this using your oven’s broiler, but you have to watch it very closely. It can go from melted sugar to a small fire in seconds. Not that I would know. That didn’t happen to me. And it is most certainly not a huge part of the reason I highly recommend making small, 2-tablespoon batches at a time on the stovetop.

3. Sprinkle raw sugar on tin foil, making sure it’s relatively concentrated so that granules will melt into each other.
4. When the sugar starts bubbling, turn off the burner, but keep the pan on the stove top. It’ll be a light brown color like this:
5. When the sugar starts to get a little darker, wearing an oven mitt, pull the piece of tin foil onto the dinner plate you have at the ready. (Hold the plate right up to the lip of the pan and pull it over quickly using the excess tin foil hanging off the edge.)

6. Allow sugar to cool completely–this will just take a few minutes. NOTE: This part of the recipe can be done the night before if you’d like. Keep the sugar on the tin foil, and wrap all the “sheets” (if you make more than one) together in one piece of tin foil.
7. Sugar should easily peel off the tin foil in pieces.

8. Break into 1-inch pieces (and crumbs for the centerpiece presentation pictured below).

For a sit-down brunch with just a handful of guests, here are a couple of options for presentation:

To create the sugar centerpiece on grapefruit halves (at right), start by piercing one shard into the grapefruit (you can pre-cut it with a knife to make it easier to push in), then lean a few other pieces against each other. They’ll be a little sticky, so it should be relatively easy to get them to stand up. Then sprinkle some crumbs around the centerpiece.

To create grapefruit stars (below), slice the grapefruit into rounds, cut the rounds into quarters, then arrange five pieces as pictured on each plate. Top with sugar shards.

For a buffet-style spread with lots of guests, the option below will make it easy for guests to eat the grapefruit with their hands, and/or eat off plates that are sitting in laps.

Slice the grapefruit into rounds, cut the rounds into quarters, and arrange on a plate with sugar shards placed on each piece:

TIP: Wait as long as possible before placing the sugar on the grapefruit. It actually holds up pretty well—it takes a good 45 minutes to an hour before the sugar starts to noticeably break down (and for the record, it’s still delicious like this)—but you’ll want to keep it looking as fresh as possible.