Penny Mackenzie's Marvelous Marmalade

My very own recipe

Hello Darlings.Here is my Marvelous Marmalade Recipe as requested by a few friends. I think this is the first time I have written my own recipe!

Below is the method and ingredients. I strongly advise that you don’t just follow the recipe. Read the advice that follows, as it is quite useful.

Penny Mackenzie's Marvelous Marmalade

Ingredients

• 1.35 kg of citrus fruit.
Made up of: 1 grapefruit, 1 lemon, the rest of the weight is in oranges.
3L of water
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2.7 kg of sugar made up of: 500 g of soft brown sugar or another similar moist sugar and 2.2 kg of granulated sugar
• Optional use any two of the following: 4 – 6 cloves, 1 stick Cinnamon, 2 star anise, 2 vanilla pods

Method

• Scrub the fruit to clean the fruit and to remove any wax that may be used to preserve the citrus.
• Squeeze the lemon that is to be used for the juice. Set aside. Keep the pips.
• Put the fruit into a large pot / pan with the water.
• Bring to the boil then simmer robustly for 2 hours until the fruit is soft.
• Remove the fruit. Keep the water.
• Cut the oranges and the grapefruit up into whatever thickness you prefer and put them in a medium sized pot.
• Cut the lemon in half and remove the pulp of the lemon and add to the oranges and grapefruit. But not the rind. Discard the rind.
• Remove ALL the pips and put them in a small pot together with the lemon pips from the squeezed lemon.
• Add a ladle or so of the kept water and boil the pips for 5 – 6 minutes.
• Keep the liquid from the boiled pips and discard the pips.
• Add the pip water, the lemon juice and the spices to the fruit in the medium pot and warm them up.
• Add this to the reserved water in the large pot / pan
• Add the sugar.
• Gently dissolve the sugar.
• Do no let the pot boil until ALL the sugar is dissolved.
• Bring the pot to a full boil and then allow to simmer for 3 hours.
• Remove the scum from the top of the pot / pan throughout the cooking process.
• At 2 ½ hours put 2 – 4 small plates into the freezer or fridge.
• At 3 hours remove the pot / pan from the heat and put a teaspoon of the mixture onto one of the plates and return to the fridge for a minute
• Test the mixture on the plate to see if the setting point has been reached.
• If not return the pot / pan to the heat and test again in 15 mins and so on until it is set.
• Leave to cool for approx. ½ an hour so that it is easy to handle
• Fill jars with your marmalade.

And that is that.
Except that it isn’t…. read on.

Hints and advice on the ingredients

The Fruit
Most recipes call for the freshest fruit you can find and I do think that if you are making regular marmalade that is a good idea but for this marmalade it is not a huge issue. I used quite old manky oranges and my grapefruit was at least a month old… to be honest.
The ratios of fruit. I am sure you can play around with this depending on what you have in the kitchen, but oranges really should be the bulk of the recipe. I only threw in the grapefruit because I had one laying around and I added the lemon for a bit of bitter!

The Sugar
To get the Oxford Style colour you need to include the soft brown (or similar) sugar. If you don’t have any then just make up the total weight in granulated. The taste will be a little different and the colour much lighter.

The Spices
You don’t have to add any spices at all. But honestly it gives a lovely hint of something special in the flavour. You could use all four or one etc. it is up to you.

Hints and advice on the Method

• Oxford Style Marmalade, and more importantly my Yiayia’s, is thick cut. Obviously, you can cut it as thick or thin as you want…. but don’t break my heart. Cut it in thick chunks.

• This marmalade has a hint of bitterness to it but if you leave any of the pips in the pulp it might be a bit too bitter.
• The pips are very important as they contain the pectin for the thickening of the marmalade. For this reason, I don’t recommend using seedless fruit. I have not read anywhere that you can’t but for this recipe you do need some pips. The pith also provides this.
• The setting point: 1 teaspoon on the cold saucer / plate. Let it cool then push the edge of the marmalade with the tip of your finger. If the marmalade is set it will wrinkle with a crinkly skin being formed.
• Sterilizing the jars. If I am organized enough, I sterilize the jars in the dishwasher on a high heat. But usually I do it in the oven. Wash the jars and lids in hot soapy water then place them on a baking tray in the oven set to 150C – 180C for 10 – 15 minutes. It is a good idea for the jars to be warm.
• The big question: how many jars do you need? Well how long is a piece of string… It depends on the size. I used smallish jars and made 14 jars. But if they had been regular shop bought left over jam jars then I think it would have made up about 5 - 6 jars.
• Depending on how long you plan on keeping the marmalade will dictate if you need to seal the jam with wax discs or with wax paper or with nothing. I used nothing. Because this batch of marmalade is not going to last 5 minutes.

Voila! I ate about half a cup of this whilst cooking it. The rich citrusy scent and  the gloopy, thick, glistening, oozy, concoction was just too tempting to resist. Besides it was utterly necessary to taste as I cooked.