Lemon Orange and Elderflower Marmalade

As I was saying the other day, (in a round about sort of way), it's the start of the season of fruitfulness, gooseberries in the garden, elderflowers sprinkling the hedgerows with their intoxicating scent, strawberries and redcurrants ripening.

I made elderflower cordial last week, and reluctant to chuck away the sliced lemons and oranges, cast about for a means to use them up - after all, it's not as if they'd been boiled for hours or anything, simply steeped in elderflower infused sugar syrup.

A friend had already offered Darina Allen's very sensible use for the lemon slices - freezing them and using in G&Ts, but I recalled a marmalade that I've made before, and wanted to recreate it.

This is a lovely, floral marmalade -  I really can't recommend it highly enough. If you've made elderflower cordial, it's pretty easy to make - and quite forgiving. Life kept intervening so it took me the best part of 3 days to get from infused slices to jars of marmalade, which finally materialised on Sunday morning.

If you haven't made elderflower cordial, you'll have to find a different recipe. Obvs.

Lemon Orange and Elderflower Marmalade

3 lemons and 3 oranges, thinly sliced, retrieved once you strained your elderflower cordial into bottles. You can bin the elderflowers though - they will have had it by now.

1kg (give or take) caster sugar
300ml elderflower cordial
4-5 sterilised jars

Put the sliced fruit into a pan, just cover with water and bring to the boil.

Simmer gently until the peel is really soft - it took about an hour but it could take up to 2.

Strain and reserve the liquid, and chop the fruit up as finely as you like, taking care to remove any pips as you go.

Weigh the fruit and then measure our double the amount of sugar. I had approximately 500g of fruit, so I used 1 kg of sugar.

Measure the reserved boiling liquid and add the 300ml of cordial. If necessary make the amount up to the equivalent liquid measure as the sugar using tap water - so for my 1 kg of sugar, I had 1 litre of liquid.

Put the chopped fruit, sugar and 1 litre of liquid into a suitable pan, bring to the boil and keep going till you reach setting point. 

How you test to confirm this I leave up to you - jam thermometers, cold plates. I suffer terribly from what I call 'setting point stress' and usually combine at least 2 methods. In this case, 105C on the jam thermometer and cold plate worked.

Decant your marmalade into jars, and Bob, as they say...

Elderflower cordial

The children have introduced a new game to our in-car entertainment repertoire. Not one to be dragged out by us parents at the first "are we nearly there yet" to a chorus of groans. Oh no.

This game has captured their imaginations and taken over even our shortest journey. And the name of this game? "Yellow Car". 

Heard of it? I'm sure you will do.

Now, you might think a game that is so absorbing would be a winner, but let me tell you, if you're not already familiar, it absolutely is not. The premise is that every time you see a yellow car you punch/pinch the other passengers and shout "Yellow Car!". Not exactly rocket science. The problem is that we've become completely obsessed.  And there are more yellow cars on the road than you might think, leading not only to yellow cars, but also to a preponderance of purple upper arms where the bruises are...

We have ridiculous arguments about orange and gold cars. Do diggers count? (Cue "We're not playing yellow VEHICLES..." in an outraged tone). I understand that there is a variation called 'Yellow Everything', but, reflecting that every car journey would turn into some kind of out of control slap-fest due to there being yellow dandelions, buttercups and celandines adorning the roadsides, yellowing fields, yellow painted houses (Cardigan is a town of brightly coloured dwellings), I have banned it.

Yellow Car remains, though, and I find myself mentally playing the game when I'm in the car on my own, clocking where yellow cars are parked, retaining the intelligence for later in the hope of gaining the upper hand.  

Not that I'm competitive or anything. 

Last week, not only was I frantically on the look out for yellow cars, I was also keeping my eye out for elderflowers, and feeling increasingly frustrated as I either managed to miss the bushes (too pre-occupied with the cars) or didn't have anything to harvest the frothy, intoxicating flowers. Ridiculous, as it turns out we have 3 elderflower bushes in the garden.

There are many, many recipes for elderflower cordial around. I started with Sarah Raven's version in her Garden Cookbook, but made free given that I didn't have any limes (an unusual addition that I haven't seen in many other recipes) and Cardigan was all out of citric acid...

Elderflower Cordial

20-25 heads of elderflower
3 oranges
3 lemons 
1.5 kg sugar

Gently wash the elderflowers to remove any little bugs that have come home with you.

Dissolve the sugar in a large pan with 1.5 litres of water, then bring to the boil. Add the flowers to the pan, then when the water has come back up to the boil, remove the pan from the heat.

Thinly slice the oranges and lemons and put them in a large bowl, then tip the hot syrup and the elderflowers on top of the fruit, stir then cover with a tea  towel or somesuch. Leave to steep for 24 hours.

At the end of the 24 hours, strain the cordial into sterilised bottles or suitable freezing containers (it freezes very well), then enjoy. Oh, and don't discard the oranges and lemons - I've got something you can make with them...

There are many uses for elderflower cordial besides just diluting it with cold water (which is wonderfully refreshing). It tastes fabulous with gin, and is a great addition to any gooseberry dish you might be thinking of - and you should given that gooseberries are also in season.