marmalade

I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. January’s challenge was to make marmalade, and I was happy to have this excuse to stretch my skills… I haven’t made marmalade since I tried putting up a carrot and lemon type about 14 years ago! At that time, I was new to canning on my own, and the peels were tough, so I never went near the stuff again.  But! I really like marmalade. 

My local grocery store had organic oranges on sale, of unknown variety, and I combined them with some of the organic peaches I froze back in the summer. The recipe I used as a guide was Marisa’s strawberry lemon marmalade from Simple Bites. 

I used 1 pound of oranges (3 fruits), 1 pound of sliced and peeled peaches, and a pound of sugar. It took a long time to thicken up; I think next time, I shouldn’t add the two cups of water, and just let the juice from the peaches soften the orange peel. 

The set is a bit soft, but the flavour is DELICIOUS. I left the peels in rather thick slices, yet they are nice and tender. The only other thing I’d change is maybe reduce the sugar, and/or add some lemon juice for a bit of a fresher taste.