Marmalade Recipe to Brighten Up Winter Days

Finding ways to brighten up winter days is a challenge but any thing which give me the opportunity to do a little mischief can't be bad. Usually, I plague everybody with tales of looking everywhere for the elusive Seville oranges only available a for a few weeks in January. But this year, he made a bee line for the Waitrose stall and a kilo of bright orange small globes were deposited on the table.

So with the sound of "lady marmalade, voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir" in my head....and it will remain there as I could not find a free download, I liked, for you. I started pitting and chopping finally, the tip here is to allow yourself time, a lot of time.

Marmalade

Cut 2lbs of oranges into halves, remove the pips, saving any juice and slice finely. Put it all in a saucepan and simmer slowly as you work away, it does not seem to matter if some oranges simmer for longer than others.

When you have finished slicing add with 2.1/2 pints of water to the pan and simmer slowly for a very long time about 2hours or until the peels are very soft

Add 3 lbs of sugar, pre-warmed in a tray in the oven. The marmalade should be then boiled rapidly to reduce it to exactly 5lbs in wight or until the mixture sets when a drop is left to cool on a saucer. Take off the heat when the setting point is reached and after 10 minutes it is ready to be put into pots.

And if you are anywhere near Cumbria at the beginning a February, there will be the World Marmalade festival http://www.marmaladefestival.com/index.html that should lighten up any body's winter

For my next post on Sunday I need the help of the good people of Canada, or anybody with Canadian recipes, could you email them to me using the contact me button on the right hand side of the blog