Oranges ...

It's taken 7 years for our citrus trees to yield any fruit, but this year, for some reason, they've gone into overdrive :)

I had this thought of making marmalade but was totally put off by words like sterilising, setting point, jam thermometers, *shudder*, and visions of my mum spending hours in the kitchen, sweating over making jam after we'd collected wild blackberries and damsons from the hedgerows and woods. I was of course hoping that there would be an easier way, so typed 'easy marmalade' into Google and ... score! the very first hit was 'Absolutely Fail-Proof Easy Marmalade'.

It's fast to make, easy to remember, and doesn't need any of the usual time consuming jam-making processes!

So basically you boil 6 oranges (or any other citrus fruit) and 1kg of sugar together for 20 minutes, pour into jars (I used Woolworth's everyday Essentials containers so that I could keep them in the freezer), and thats pretty much it!

The first batch I made, I followed the advice from the comments left, and peeled half of the oranges before processing them ... definitely a good move as it was still chunky but spreadable ... yum!

I made the second batch with just the juice (the first one cooked so quickly that I had to make more, even if it did mean going and picking the fruit at night by torchlight! ... but hey?, when you're on a roll ... ). So I used 4 cups of juice with 4 cups of sugar and a packet of Jamsetta pectin, boiled together, just the same for 20 minutes. I don't know whether or not I actually needed the pectin, but according to the million recipes out there, it seems like most of the natural pectin is in the skin, pith and pips, which I didn't use ... anyhows, the clear marmalade came out my favourite.

Or maybe it's orange jam not marmalade?... either way, for half an hours work, it turned out awesome and I wont be needing shop bought marmalade again :)