With a collection of citrus fruits going bad there was nothing else for it but to make marmalade. I’ve made a citrus jam or marmalade (no idea what the difference is or why there is one, must look that up some day, feel free to comment if you know) twice before. The first was with oranges only, and tasted fine, but didn’t set at all so it was more of a syrup. The second was with mandarins, which set so hard it was like toffee. Oh wait, I lie, three times, somewhere in the middle there I tried to make grapefruit marmalade, but I burnt it quite thoroughly. Not wishing to waste the home-grown grapefruit I still went through the process of jarring it and transporting it home to my parents, where my mum took one look at my jars of black chunky sticky somethingerather and, well, it got put to the compost.

Anyway! I went straight in as I tend to do, without a recipe, chopped some left over lemon, two old oranges, an old mandarin and what turned out to be a clementine (skin on) and threw it all into a saucepan over medium heat. I collected up all the pips, and not having any muslin cloth or a suitable strainer I fished around and found a ‘gift’ tea portion wrapped in some kind of net cloth with a ribbon and figured that would do. Put the tea in my cup ready for Tuesday morning and tied up the pips in the little synthetic and probably not entirely suitable for the purpose piece of material.

Next is sugar. I have two flavoured sugars in my cupboard and when I opened it the first I saw was the lavender sugar. Which seemed like a good choice. I did a cursory google for citrus and lavender marmalade or something like that, established that people had done something similar before, at least with oranges, decided it must be a good idea and in it went.

Simmered for about three hours, stirring in between cleaning the house, making dinner and sending emails/shopping online.

It looked so good to begin with, but for some reason the skins didn’t quite go that nice candied soft chewy texture. Possibly because I don’t follow a recipe. Instead it will be some tough chewy citrus skin marmalade.

Taste’s good though 🙂 and it’s not burnt!

Scones at mine this weekend?

Have a great week everyone!

Love Amanda