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 :)

The easiest fruitcake recipe ever!

I don't usually make a Christmas Cake ... there's only two of us in the family that eat it, and a whole cake seems like too much hassle (and too much on our waistlines), so I tend to have a tiny shop bought one, albeit usually dry and pale and not very Christmassy ... buuuuut, this year will be different ... I found a recipe for the easiest, richest fruitcake ever :) It was so easy that I'm thinking of making another one to ice and have as a centre piece on the table on Christmas Day. I made this one today, and of course, HAD to cut into it to see how it tasted ;D (Now that it's cut, I might use some of it to make Christmas cake ice cream and maybe some rum balls) ... anyways, here's the recipe, (and don't be put off by the small ingredient list!)

1kg dried fruit

600ml iced coffee or iced chocolate

2 cups self raising flour

Soak the fruit in the iced coffee in the fridge overnight (you'll know when it's been long enough when all the liquid gets absorbed)

Stir in the 2 cups of flour

Place in a large greased and lined cake tin, and bake at 180 degrees for an hour and a half

...that's it!!

I'm thinking that with my next cake, I might swap the iced coffee for Baileys, just to make it a bit more festive, but still less boozy than a traditional cake :)