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...

The Marmalade Blues

So it's 7.00 on a Sunday morning and this is what the stovetop looks like:

What I really wanted to make this year was lemon & lime marmalade, which of course I could make at any time, but somehow, January is marmalade time, isn't it? And of course, rather than remembering my desire for lemon & lime, I was seduced by the sight of some Seville oranges, conveniently forgot the kilo or so I had in the freezer left over from last year (and some donated by a friend), and bought a 1.5 kilo bag. "I love making marmalade!"

Er, no you don't, Sally. It's all the setting point stress of jam that you put yourself through every summer, plus numerous opportunities for injury during the making process. And it takes a bloody age. You do not have enough time to make marmalade. You want to be doing OTHER THINGS.

Too late.

We had a lovely day with the kids yesterday. The rain meant the Husband's current exterior project is on hold, so we all went into town in the morning and then after a dog walking/homework pause in the happy family scene, we played board games for nearly 3 hours. I must have come over all maternal, because I normally am no good at playing board games (I am a natural cheat for a start), and I will never never play monopoly again, but we had a good laugh. Amazing (and in case you're wondering, my kids are 9 and 6.5 and up till very recently, playing any kind of game for that long would have been utter hell). Great for family relations, but not so good if you've got over 2 kilos of marmalade oranges to prep.

By the time the kids were upstairs it was nearly 8.30. After the annual "Which recipe do we follow?" "No, Nigel's had too much liquid in it." "What about Delia?" "Didn't we combine Dan and Nigel last year?" debate, I settled on a very helpful method from the Guardian online - How to make Perfect Orange Marmalade . Sounded good to me. I didn't have the same type of sugar, but I wasn't about to add to my woes by heading up to the Co-Op (and actually, I'm not sure they stretch to light muscovado anyway) so bog standard preserving sugar (which I had in the cupboard) it is.

I couldn't work out how to get the food processor juicing attachment to work so started off doing it by hand. Squeezing into the pan, scraping the pips and pith into a muslin lined bowl, putting the empty halves in an other bowl... Just as the RSI was setting in nicely, the Husband came in, clicked the necessary attachments in the right place and got the juicer working. Let me tell you that having your knuckles skinned by a food processor juicer attachment when you're already wondering what madness possessed you to start on this, is just about the pits. Less Seville orange, more blood orange marmalade - I wish I'd stuck with the RSI to be honest (I jest, I didn't actually break the skin, but it hurt a lot - you have to hold the fruit halves down onto the attachment and it spins round very fast making it easy to slip and catch yourself. I say don't try this at home, kids.) 

So, oranges (and lemons - I needed 2 - bang goes my lemon & lime marmalade that I was going to knock up from the various ends of lemon and lime knocking around in the fridge...) juiced, time to shred the peel. Oh hoo - f-ing - ray. By now, the Husband in firmly implanted on the sofa, watching TV & eating the crisps.

Reader, I started, with my sharp little knife, I found something I wanted to listen to on the radio and I set to work. Shred, shred, shred. Shred, shred, shred. AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH.

I put it all in the food processor. This time with the knife attachment. Fortunately, the lid has to be on for this to work, so no opportunity for further injury there. How is it possible to feel guilty about shredding orange peel in a food processor instead of with a knife. I really need to get a grip.

By now, you can appreciate that there's quite a lot in terms of volume. I have the juice and shredded (ha!) zest of 2.4 kilos of oranges and lemons (I'd got the frozen oranges out of the freezer to add to the mix). I have 2 kilos of sugar. All in my preserving pan (that's the one on the right in the photo - the other one is the Husband's beer making pan). I need to add 4-5 litres of water.

My pan is not big enough. But I have already put most of it into one pan, so I need to work out how to divide it between 2 pans.

I tried decanting some into the Husband's beer pan, but realised that because the sugar hadn't dissolved, there was a definitely uneven distribution. And I had to divide the contents of my muslin bag up. At that point I went to bed.

So you see, nearly 3 hours on and a night's sleep, I am really no closer to having marmalade. This morning, I have brought the stuff up to temperature to dissolve the sugar and then rather precariously remixed it and then redistributed it back between the 2 pans. It now needs to simmer for some time - the recipe says 2 hours, but working on past experience, this could be any time - to get the peel soft - before you get down to the business of bubbling it up to the dreaded setting point. Once I've done the simmering to soften the peel bit, I will be leaving it again till this evening for the final push. That's 2 nights of sofa surfing foregone in the pursuit of domestic smugness. That will teach me.

So is there a point to all this? Well, homemade marmalade is delicious, no doubt about it, but it's a right old faff, and it takes an age, and I'd like you all to remember that. I'm not saying don't do it, but just weigh up the costs and benefits - is it worth RSI, skinned knuckles and late nights? Do you have better things to do? Just think about that.

My only consolation is that with 2.4 kilos worth bubbling away, I will have enough to last us for a long time, and may be I can get on with my lemon & lime version. Can someone remind me of this next year, please?

Christmas Cake Part 2 - the Marzipan

I like to think I'm a glass half full kinda gal most of the time. Generally, I find it much easier to cope with life if I can look on the positive side and try not to dwell too much on things that haven't gone so well - the 'character building' things I was muttering about a couple of weeks ago. I know I don't always succeed, but mostly, I can pull myself together pretty quickly.

So looking on the bright side - as I can, now that the pain is under control - of this whole painful jaw episode, if I hadn't been flying on pain killers this week, I would have gone out drinking and carousing the other night. And as I have been trying to take things easy, I sat down and watched TV, instead of running around doing a million other things at home, and caught the Christmas Great British Bake Off programme. As a result of that, I remembered that I'd made a Christmas cake and it needed icing. I also realised that if I got a move on, I could do the whole icing bit properly: marzipan first, and leave it to dry, before topping with the actual icing. I even had some apricot jam knocking around, to do the whole brushing the cake bit to get the marzipan to stick. Normally, I end up using marmalade and picking out the bits - or not, depending on the mood I'm in. To be honest, the extra orange peel can add an extra something to the cake...

Now I did wonder if this year would be the year that I made my own marzipan. It's not.

So moving swiftly on, I got down the cake and unwrapped it from its foil parcel - fantastic smells all round. I have to say that it's not a particularly boozy cake - I do prefer to drink my alcohol than eat it given the choice - but there's a definite aroma of Christmas to it - sherry-tinged Christmas this year.

I have a piece of granite chopping board which I use for rolling things out (got it in Sainsburys - it's nothing grand), so I dusted that with icing sugar, then put a couple of dessertspoons of apricot jam into a small pan on a low heat to melt.

I rolled out a pack of golden marzipan so that it would cover the cake, top and sides, and some (you want to have trimmings to make tasteful decorations for the final cake, anyway). Brush the melted jam over the cake, and then cover with the marzipan. You need to get the blunt side of a knife and kind of tuck the marzipan in under the cake and trim it off. I did notice that Mary iced her cake by having the flat side uppermost, which would probably make the tucking in and trimming off bit easier, but in all the excitement I was feeling this evening about actually wanting to do something in the kitchen after the last week of indifference, I got a bit carried away and forget. Anyway, it wasn't that hard:

So now my cake is all marzipanned and can dry out before I put the icing on. This has never happened before. It also leaves me some time to consider what beautiful cake adornments to turn my left over marzipan into, instead of doing it all at once in a hurry.

Any ideas gratefully received.

Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam

This is my jam pan. It is huge and enormous and we rescued it from on top of my mother’s kitchen cupboards. She had at least 3 up there, I think they were breeding.  

We’re at a bit of a critical period of the year as far as our preserves (ha ha!) are concerned. We ran out of chutney a few weeks ago as Blue seems to be inhaling it, and we’re running pretty low on jam. It’s at this point in the year that the balance between the shelf for jam and the shelf for empty jam jars starts to tip in favour of the latter, while the kids end up digging out something half-crystalised to spread on their toast from a jar that bears a label indicating the contents to be at least 3 years old.

The 'jam' cupboard. Spot the home-pickled chillies

I am not great at making jam. In fact, the Husband usually comes into his own here, confidently taking over the whole setting point thing, until he got so fed up with me wailing about it that he bought me a sugar thermometer. I used the sugar thermometer last summer when I made Nigella’s

peach and redcurrant jam . Not a fantastic example of confident jam making, granted, but we made some pretty lovely marmalade earlier this year with the help of the thermometer, and so tonight, I was prepared, and instead of sticking plates in the freezer, I just got the thermometer out of the drawer AT THE START of the process.

Everything is so late in the garden this year, there’s not much to make jam out of, and certainly nothing that could be worth turning into chutney yet, but we do have rhubarb. A colleague gave me this recipe a few months ago and I have been dying to try it. She assured me that the resulting jam tastes like rhubarb and custard. She was not wrong.

The original recipe was copied out of a Country Living magazine, but I have added a couple of bits in, and given some more detail in the method.

***Before you start on this, bear in mind that you need to leave the rhubarb to macerate in the sugar for at least 8 hrs – I left mine for 24 – before actually making the jam***

Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam

Ingredients: 1kg summer rhubarb (trimmed weight), 1 kg jam sugar, 1 vanilla pod, juice of half a lemon and half an orange.

Method: wash and trim the rhubarb, and slice into short lengths – I followed the picture my friend gave me so the pieces were about 1-2 cms long. Split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Put rhubarb, vanilla pod and seeds in a large bowl with the sugar, stir together, cover and leave for at least 8 hrs somewhere cool – the fridge is good.

This draws out a lot of liquid from the fruit.

When you are ready to make the jam, empty the fruit and sugar mixture into a large pan. It will be quite gloopy and sticky with a load of sugar at the bottomg of the bowl. Scrape it all into the pan.

It doesn’t have to be a specific jam pan, but it needs to have a good, thick bottom.

Add the lemon and orange juice, then heat up the pan gently and stir (also gently) till the sugar is dissolved, then increase the heat and bring the pan to the boil till it has reached setting point. You can faff about with frozen plates but I urge you to buy a jam thermometer. It has a big line with the word JAM by it at approx 102⁰C /220⁰ F.

check out the pink froth!

When the jam mixture has reached this temperature, turn the heat off, remove the vanilla pod and skim off any scum that has formed on top of the jam. Leave for 5 mins then fill your sterilised jars (I used 850g rhubarb and 850g sugar and it made 4 jars). Cover the jars with a clean tea towel until cool, then put the lids on and feel smug as you put them in the cupboard.

Just loving the colour!

Mmmm Marmalade chelsea buns - thanks Dan!

It was bitterly cold this morning – no two ways about it – but completely glorious. Our usual Saturday morning scramble was somewhat tempered due to the Husband’s crash incident. The car is now sitting in a holding garage waiting for the repair garage to pick it up and assess. Don’t get me started about the uselessness of insurance companies. Swimming was off as result – no transport as the camper van is still snug in its barn for another couple of months, but I have to say that we didn’t try too hard to think of alternatives. Much as we acknowledge that Blue and Pink need to be able to swim, getting to the pool for 9.00 on a Saturday can be a struggle.

This didn’t stop Blue waking up ridiculously early and sneaking downstairs to watch TV. I jolted to when I heard the door to the TV room being opened (we have to close it otherwise the dog sneaks in and spends the night stretched out in luxury on the sofa, to sneak back to his bed when he hears movement upstairs in the morning. I know this because I’ve heard him. And then when I go downstairs, he looks at me sheepishly and wags his tail. Because he knows I know.)

Anyway, swimming or no, I was downstairs at 7 with my morning cuppa thinking about facing the cold. The Husband appeared a little later, went out to feed the chickens and came back pronouncing that it was -8 outside. I looked at the dog. He was lying on his bed with his big spaniel eyes saying ‘take me out ppppuuuurrrrllleeeeeeeeeeese’. I decided the only thing for it was to give myself an incentive, so all thoughts of a small bowl of muesli abandoned, I started Dan Lepard’s marmalade Chelsea buns. Very conveniently when a frosty dog walk is in the offing, you mix up the dough then leave for an hour before kneading rising and baking. So I duly mixed and left then headed out into the cold. It was bitter, but no wind and the sun was coming up the sky was clear and the countryside was beautiful. The dog managed to behave himself in that he didn’t disappear off into the undergrowth heading for the river, and no birdlife was harmed. We met some of our Saturday morning dog walking regulars and exchanged appropriate inanities about our dogs and the weather, then went on our way. I love it!

An hour later, back home for the kneading, rolling and rising (time for a shower) then baked. The Husband had offered me a coffee before I went out with the dog, but I declined and waited to brew some fresh as the buns were baking. Boy, was it worth it. Steaming hot, lovely coffee and a heavenly marmalade bun. I used half 2011 Nigel Slater recipe (quite dark, bitter marmalade) and half lemon and orange marmalade that I’d made out of the citrus fruit that I’d used to make elderflower cordial with previously. I also added an egg wash on the buns before baking them because Dan’s recipe didn’t include it, but having baked Nigella’s scrummy cinnamon buns, I was a little worried that they needed a glaze. Very easy though – 1 egg beaten with a splash of milk and brushed over them.
All I can say is these are delicious – not as sweet as the cinnamon buns but very moreish and definitely good breakfast fodder.


Are you tempted? Here is the recipe:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/20/marmalade-chelsea-buns-recipe

Mmmm Marmalade

A couple of Sundays ago, the Husband and I spent a happy evening comparing marmalade techniques and slicing up orange peel. The next day we made marmalade. We’re just so rock ‘n’ roll, it hurts.

Anyway, having used Nigel Slater’s method last year, and decided that there was too much water in it to boil off, we did some surfing and came up with a combination of Dan Lepard and Nigel Slater’s which worked pretty well. Last year’s batch of just Nigel was very dark – probably because of the additional bubbling that all the extra water took – but we liked his method of dealing with the oranges, whereas Dan’s method  involved a whole litre less water, and the resulting marmalade is more to our taste. However, when it came to putting the jars away we realised that we still had a couple of jars left over from the last lot. Plus a lemon, orange and elderflower marmalade that we made from the fruit left over from making from elderflower cordial. We only have limited shelf space, so we needed urgent marmalade recipes and Dan has obliged twice this week.

I made his marmalade flapjack from Short & Sweet on Wednesday. It’s a great and easy flapjack recipe, and the resulting bars were very yummy. I thought they might be a bit dark, partly because it uses treacle not syrup, and also because of the darkness of the marmalade, but no, they were very good. This evening, however, was the real winner. From last week’s Guardian magazine, where he writes a column – marmalade carrot puddings .: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/27/marmalade-recipes-preserves-dan-lepard

They are kind of an individual sponge pudding thing. I made half quantities, fudging it with the eggs again (the recipe says 3 medium eggs but I only had large ones - our chickens are slowly coming back in to lay, finally after what seems like months of moulting and petulance - and one small bantam egg from when we chicken sat for our neightbours), and goodness only knows what a dariole mould is, but the recipe worked fine in ramekins. The puds were a real hit, and were really really tasty.

I used dark muscovado sugar because that’s what I had in the cupboard, and I expect that a combination of light muscovado and this year’s marmalade would have resulted in a slightly lighter pudding, but the ones I made today were no less delicious for it. Blue considered the pudding and remarked that it looked just like a sort of mini Christmas pudding (it doesn’t really, at all, but I sort of knew what he meant) and inspiration struck. Forget ice cream or custard. What these little beauties taste really good with is the left over brandy butter from Christmas.