Homemade Marmalade or Paddington Bear eat your heart out

Every year I think that this one will be the Year of the Marmalade. Last year, I thought it would be the one but then I couldn't find any Seville oranges -why are they so elusive? Maybe because all the marmalade makers out there snaffle them up before I get there! This year, I spotted a 1kg box in Waitrose and went for it there and then, and thus I was committed to make some. There is little else you can do with a Seville orange, except maybe, Duck a l'orange. Waitrose also have a recipe posted on their site for herb scented marmalade (Waitrose are clever like that). This is the recipe I followed sans herbs.

The first step is really easy - to chop off the bottom and boil the in water whole. I left the oranges in the pan overnight and the following day they were beautifully soft. Because the bottoms were cut off, the water and juices intermingled, and with a gentle scrape the innards came out easily.

So I lied a little when I said I was using the Waitrose recipe, because what I actually did was use a bit of a BBC one too! Mainly due to the fact that because I wasn't using any herbs, I didn't have a muslin bag to put the flesh into. Instead, I added it to the liquid and boiled it for 5 minutes and then passed it through a sieve and you are left with the most glorious liquid. 

For the next stage, you will need the biggest pan you can get your hands on. No bigger than that! I ended up using the bottom piece of my steamer and I had to discard about a quarter of the liquid even then. You add in your chopped peel (let's just say mine would be classed as thick cut) and sugar and boil away until the setting point.You can only tell whether you have reached this point by spooning a little marmalade on a cold plate, letting it cool a little and pushing it with your fingernail. If it wrinkles, you are there. If not, keep on boiling away and testing until you get there. It took about 25 minutes for me to reach this point.

Here are the links to the two recipes which I used:

• Waitrose
• BBC

Love Mrs Jones x