As much as I wish it was summer already, I am enjoying the late winter oranges. At the moment they're sweet and juicy and perfect for breakfast.
But before we go any further, I want you to know: This is not a recipe. It is merely a suggestion.
Oranges pair perfectly with thick, plain yoghurt. They make a complete breakfast sprinkled with a few oats, and enjoyed with a cup of tea in the sunshine.
This suggestion is a very loose interpretation of this recipe. I wish I was organised enough to actually make this recipe, but I'm not.
Plus, I'm lazy. That's a bad combination.
If you're a bit more organised, you could toast your oats until they're crisp, and drizzle with honey before sprinkling on the oranges. The combination of hot crisp oats, and cold sweet oranges is pretty good.
Oranges with yoghurt: Serves 1
1 orange, a few spoonfuls of plain or Greek yoghurt, oats.
Peel and segment the orange (I really enjoy this part). Place in a bowl and spoon over the yoghurt. Sprinkle with oats, and drizzle with maple syrup, if you're feeling fancy-free. Don't forget the cinnamon! Eat greedily in the sunshine.
You know what's embarrassing? You're at the supermarket buying toilet paper. You reach up to grab a pack off the top shelf. They're precariously stacked on the shelf, and as you pull your packet down, all the packages of toilet paper fall off the shelf and onto your head.
You know what isn't embarrassing? Making a perfect cake. So perfect that people ask you for the recipe. And after my last cake debacle, I needed to bake something that made me feel better about my skillz.
This cake definitely did that. It was dotted with cherries and perfectly risen. Dusted with icing sugar, it was the perfect dessert to share with family. You could probably sub something in for the cherries if you can't find these, like some nice seasonal berry (they're not in season here. Yet.). I think a splash of almond extract would bring out the flavour of the almond meal, but it isn't necessary, because the cake is perfect. Just as it is.
Cherry & almond cake:
Slightly adapted from 'Sweet Food'
125g unsalted butter, at room temp
185g sugar
2 eggs
95g (1 cup) almond meal
185g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1 jar (680g) morello cherries
Drain the cherries in a colander/sieve (reserve the juice for yummy drinks later).
Preheat the oven to 180C, and grease a 20cm fluted tin.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
Stir in the almond meal.
Fold in half the flour and baking powder, then all the milk, the remaining flour/baking powder.
Gently fold in the cherries.
Scrape the mix into the prepared tin.
Bake for 45-50 mins, until cake tester comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the pan for 10 mins, before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Today was one of those days. Those days where you can't find any clothes to wear and then you can't even be bothered to blow dry your hair.
In the end, I threw on my old jeans and one of Brent's t-shirts to wear to work. It turned out that the shirt had some (semi) famous artist's design printed on the front, and everyone complimented it.
I'm pretty sure that one good way to make you feel less scummy in the morning is to eat something girlie for breakfast. Like a ruby grapefruit.
I'd never eaten a grapefruit before this morning. The ruby grapefruit's looked so lovely sitting in a big pile at the shop that I though I would buy one and see how it went.
It met all my expectations: bitter, tart and slightly sweet. Delicious.
But grapefruit's have this... stigma about them. As if you can only eat a grapefruit if you're on a diet or something. I know they're good for you, but I don't understand why they're not an everyday thing.
I did think that I would still be hungry after only eating one half of the fruit, but I wasn't! And the oats, butter and sugar really make you feel like you're not trying to be super healthy.
Mmm.... butter and sugar. And in less than 10 minutes!
Crispy grapefruit: serves 2 Adapted from All Recipes.
1 ruby grapefruit
1/4 cup oats
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
Preheat the grill to a high temperature.
Cut the grapefruit in half, and slice around the pink flesh so that it will be easier to scoop out later.
Mix the oats, cinnamon, butter and sugar in a small bowl until well combined.
Pile half the oat mix on each grapefruit half.
Place the grapefruit on a tray and stick under the grill until mixture is brown and crisp on top, about 5 minutes. Keep a close eye on the grapefruit, making sure they don't burn.take out from under the grill and serve straight away.
This cake was both a disaster and a success. It seems odd that one cake can be so contradictory, but it's true. It was a success because I hadn't made a cake with quinces before, and there were so many opportunities for it to go badly, but it didn't. The quinces were perfectly poached, the batter tasted good and the syrup on top was amazing.
It was a disaster, though, because of the syrup on top. If you only learn one thing today, please, let it be this: Don't be impatient.
I poured the syrup on the cake while it was cooling in the pan. And then I flipped out the cake onto a plate. When I tried to flip it back onto the cooling rack, the syrup was stuck to the plate and ripped the sticky top off the cake. Not completely, but enough for me to freak out.
I freak out a lot when I'm baking. And I don't think the cake was quite cooked properly.
So there you have it: Contradictions.
A quince is not a pretty fruit. They're motley yellow and covered in a grey fluff. You can't eat them raw because they're outrageously tart. And when you peel and chop them, not only do they brown almost instantly, but they smell funny. After they've been poached, though, they turn a lovely rosey colour and they taste much better than you could have imagined.
I made a fairly simple tea cake batter (is that what you call it?) for this recipe and mashed half the poached quinces into the batter. Then I put the rest of the quinces into the batter, imagining that they would be nice to bite into. Next time, I'd mash all the quinces into the cake, just to see what a difference that makes. I'll have to wait till next year, I guess, because I used all my quinces in this cake.
I took this cake into work and made everyone eat it, and they all seemed to like it. So take that, Disaster!
2 cups poached quinces*
220g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
110g unsalted butter, softened
330g sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup pure cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and flour a 20cm springform pan.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Mix flour, cinnamon and salt together.
Beat in half the flour mix.
Add the cream.
Beat in remaining flour mix and vanilla.
Strain poaching liquid from quinces and reserve.
Mash half the poached quinces and fold into the batter.
Pour half the batter into the prepared tin.
Arrange remaining poached quinces over the batter.
Pour the remaining batter over the quinces.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until cake tester comes out clean.
[Optional] Make a sticky quince syrup. In a small saucepan, mix the reserved poaching liquid with 1/2 cup water, 3 tbsp caster sugar and 2 tsps lemon juice. Cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, until mixture starts to thicken. Pour this over the cake once it has cooled.
*Poach peeled, cored and chopped quinces with about 2 cups water, 4 tbsps sugar, cinnamon and 1 vanilla bean, until soft, about 20-30 mins. If you're new to quinces, you could use less than 2 cups. This was about 8 medium quinces that were a bit bruised and had been eaten by bugs. So I ended up with less use-able fruit than I anticipated.
I made this limoncello for a friends birthday. I was really late with the present, but with something as nice as this, I'm sure he won't mind. It was pretty simple, really. Just zest all the lemons, juice them, put them in a pan with some sugar and water, simmer, mix it with some vodka, bottle it all up. See? How easy was that! If you want to impress your friends, def make this. I've already decided that I need to make this again for some people who's birthday's are coming up.
Limoncello. From 'Gifts from the kitchen' by Annie Rigg
5-6 unwaxed lemons, washed
250g caster sugar
100ml water
700ml bottle of vodka
Zest the lemons. I just used a vegetable peeler for this.
Juice all the lemons, and set the juice aside.
In a small pan, mix the water, sugar and zest.
Set over medium heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.
Reduce heat and simmer for 15 mins.
Add the lemon juice and simmer for another 5 mins.
Set aside to cool.
Pour the vodka into a large sterilised* jar (The jar needs to be big enough to hold the vodka and the lemon syrup).
Add the lemon syrup, zest and all, and give it a good shake.
Leave in a cool, dry, dark place for a week. Shake the jar every day.
Strain the liquid into a pretty bottle. If you're going to put the liquid back into the bottle that the vodka came in, there will be a bit left over. Feel free to keep this for yourself.
*Sterilise your jar by washing it in hot soapy water, and then setting in a 200C oven for 20 mins, on a shelf covered with newspaper. Take the jar out and leave to cool before pouring the liquid in. (Remember, cold liquid in a hot jar equals cracked jar.)
My dad has a big apple tree growing in his back yard. No-body knows what kind of apples they are, but we do know that they are good for cooking.
You know what else is good for cooking? Pie is good for cooking.
When dad gave me this huge bag of apples, the first thing I thought of was pie. But the weird thing was, I didn't really know how to make the pie. I think that making pie is one of those things that people should just know how to make. But I didn't. I had to look up a recipe. I mean, I know how to make pastry, I just didn't know what to put inside the pastry. Other than apples, obviously.
But I found a recipe in the end. And I used a whole block of butter. And then my sister dropped over unannounced and she helped me peel all the apples. And then we juggled the apples, because we remembered that once upon a time, we knew how to do it. And then we ate lots of the peeled apples with some sharp cheddar cheese, because that is a really good combination. And we drank some tea and we had a really nice time.
One serving of pastry from this recipe (also from Smitten Kitchen)
7 medium cooking apples
1 tablespoon orange juice
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 egg, beaten lightly (for glazing the pie lid)
Preheat the oven to 250C and make sure the oven rack is on the bottom shelf. This is important for a crispy pie base.
Peel, core and chop the apples (it's helpful if you have a sister or other nice sibling to help you do this).
Put them in a bowl and toss them with the juice and the dry ingredients. Set these aside.
Line the pie tin with half of the chilled, rolled out pastry, making sure there is enough overlapping the dish. Chill for 5 mins in the fridge.
Arrange the apples on the pastry case, piling them up in the middle.
Lay the other half of the rolled out pastry on top of the apples, making sure there is enough pastry overlapping the dish.
Fold the bottom layer of pastry over the top of the pie, like a blanket. This way, the pastry won't shrink and the apple juices won't escape.
Crimp and arrange the pastry so it sticks onto itself and looks nice. You could use the edge of a fork to make the crimps.
Cut four slits in the top of the pie.
Brush the pie with the egg.
Sprinkle the top of the pie with some granulated sugar.
Put the pie in the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 220C. Bake for 25 mins until crust is golden.
Turn the oven down again to 190C, rotate the pie and continue to bake for another 30-35 mins.
Let the pie cool before cutting and serving to your nice family.
So! It seems like I haven't been around here for a long time. It's not that I haven't been cooking at all, because obviously I have, I've just been doing other things. And I don't want to turn this into a post about why I haven't been here, because that's boring, I just want to say that I've had an epiphany.
I only blog when I need a distraction. From studying. Whatever. I mean, it's not like I'm flighty, or anything. I just thought you should know. Anyway, lets talk about the muffins!
They're great. They're delicious. They're moist. They're full of soft nectariney bits and lovely brown sugar. But lets talk about the icing. It's cream cheese icing (my favourite), but it's so much more than that. It's brown sugar cream cheese icing. That's why it's that funny colour. But don't let that brown colour turn you off eating them. Because they're tasty. The perfect afternoon treat on a rainy autum day when you should be doing your assignment, but all you have energy for is watching repeats of Xena, Warrior Princess.
I made these with nectarines because I like them better than peaches (what the origianl recipe asked for) and thats what I had in the house. I've subbed in some LSA mix for part of the flour, but feel free to omitt this step, or use wholewheat flour instead. The LSA mix made the muffins speckled and a bit nutty, which I think made them nicer. And I halved the recipe because I can't be trusted around 24 muffins that are this delicious. But I'll give you the whole recipe, because you might have better self control than I do. Also, about the yoghurt: if you use a flavoured yoghurt (which I accidently did) you might want to cut the sugar content down a little bit, because the icing is really sweet.
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup LSA mix or whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
Pinch of nutmeg
170g unsalted butter, soft
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups sour cream or full-fat yogurt
3 large nectarines, cored, and chopped smallish
Preheat oven 180C. Line 24 muffin cups.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugars until fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla essence and the yoghurt/sour cream.
Stir in the dry ingredients.
Fold in the nectarine pieces and spoon into the muffin cups.
Bake 18-20 minutes, until the tops are golden and a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack before icing.
Brown sugar cream cheese icing
You could use dark brown sugar instead of the light brown, but it makes the icing darker, which may not look as nice. But it still tastes good! Also, I think lemon juice instead of vanilla essence might be raelly nice as well. Even when I halved this recipe, I had heaps of icing left over, even for 12 cakes. You might wanna keep this in mind. I also think that this icing would be good on some other sort of cake as well. A nice lemony cake. yum.
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup powdered sugar
500g cream cheese, soft
110g unsalted butter, soft
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter.
Add the sugars, cornstarch and vanilla. Beat until icing is smooth and light.
Chill the bowl in the fridge about 30 minutes, then spread or pipe onto cooled cakes.
I went to my Dad's house today, because my sister was sick and wanted me to hang out with her. She likes to watch the O.C, and I like to bake things. So we did both. This cake was super easy to make. Caitlin made the batter, and I peeled the apples. The end.
But wait! There's more! This cake is more than just a regular apple cake. Soft morsels of cinnamon-y apple hiding amongst a moist cinnamon-y cake, topped with a crunchy, hard coating of sweet, buttery caramel. Goodness me was this combination delicious. We ate half the cake in one go!
This cake is a Smitten Kitchen recipe, and I trust what she says in all her recipes, but I couldn't stop thinking about caramel after I saw David Lebovitz's post on how to make dry caramel. So we added that as well. I hadn't made dry caramel before, but it's really easy. I think I prefer it to regular caramel made with water.
I don't have anything more to say about the cake, so here's a heap of photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's six thousand words for you to look at. Hopefully they convey this delicious experience.
As I said above, my sister made the batter, so I'm not sure how much she deviated from the recipe (if she did at all. She follows the rules), so I'll give you the original batter recipe. But we did mix it up a bit with the caramel topping (which wasn't in the original recipe) and by changing around the order of the batter/apple layers. Also, the recipe said to bake the cake for 1 1/2 hours, but after an hour, our cake was done, so I've changed the baking time in the recipe. Like I said, only slightly adapted.
6 apples, we used golden delicious, peeled, cored and diced
1 tbsp cinnamon
5 tbsp sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup orange juice
2 1/2 tsps vanilla
4 eggs
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a bundt tin.
Toss the apples with the cinnamon and sugar, set aside.
In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, mix oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla.
Mix wet ingredients into the flour mix.
Add eggs, one at a time.
Arrange half the apples on the bottom of the tin.
Pour half the batter onto the apples. Arrange the remaining apples and then pour the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean.
Turn the cake out onto a large plate and pour over the caramel topping.
Pour 1 cup caster sugar into a heavy based pan. Place over medium heat. Don't stir it, but just watch it until it starts to liquify around the edges. When this happens, start to drag the liquid bits into the middle of the pan, but try not to stir it too much, otherwise it can crystallise.
The sugar will start to caramelise at this point, so keep watching it until all the sugar is dissolved and the caramel is bronze coloured. Try not to burn it, as burnt caramel cannot be fixed. If you're using a black pan, lift some of the caramel out of the pan to check what colour it is. Once all the sugar has liquified, and is bronzey coloured, it's ready!
If you prefer a buttery caramel (I sure do), add a tablespoon of butter and stir it in. It will bubble up as the butter melts, but keep stirring it in until incorporated.
It hardens fairly quickly, so only make the caramel when you're ready to pour it over the cake.
No. That isn't dirt on my strawberry. It's pepper.
I can't remember who told me that you should put pepper on your strawberries instead of icing sugar, but they were right. It seems like an odd combination, and when I first heard I thought it was wrong. But the ground pepper enhances the sweetness of the strawberries without overpowering the strawberry flavour. I'm not exactly sure why this is. I tried to google it, but no one could tell me (if you know why, I'd love for you to share!). You can't taste the pepper, exactly, it just does something amazing to the strawberries that you wouldn't expect.
So next time you've got some strawberries on hand, add a sprinkling of ground black pepper, instead of icing sugar or cream, and see the difference it makes. Go on, I dare you.
Oh, if you want a list of other (somewhat) suprising food combinations, you could check out this list that someone has put together on Listverse.
I've always wanted to host a dinner party. Always. In my Ideal Dinner Party Situation, everything would be perfect. The wine would be good, the table would be set in a fancy design, there'd be lots of people in lovely dresses/suits, the food would be amazing, and I would play the perfect hostess. Instead, we don't live in a house big enough to host a dinner party, so alas, I'll have to keep dreaming about the perfect dinner party. One day. It'll happen one day.
But in the meantime, I can have dinner with as many people as can fit in our lounge room, and around the tiny table that I borrowed from my Dad. That makes a total of four whole people. So there was Brent, Me, Brent's sister Kirby, and her boyfriend, Arie. We squished around this table that I set up (at the time, it didn't look like the one above. I didn't take any good photo's at the time, because I was embarrassed, I've never had people watch me take photos like that before, so I re-set the table when I was cleaning up this morning. Sneaky. In an Ideal World, my table setting would have looked [like this]), and ate this huge meal in the space of an hour, because we decided to catch a movie after. We had a simple tomato Bruschetta, Beouf Bourguignon (Julia Child's recipe, of course), and French Apple Tart (also Julia Child's). I could tell you about all the bad things about the meal, but let's focus on the positive, shall we? The tomato Bruschetta was nice, the tomato/fetta/red onion combination never fails. The sauce for the Bourguignon was really rich from the wine and tasted really good, but I think the mushrooms and the onions (which had been cooked in an indecent amount of butter) were my favourite bits. The apple tart looked really pretty, if I may say so myself, I was super proud of my lovely apple-pattern on the top. The apple sauce mixture underneath was really tasty and spiced just the right amount (it was even good for breakfast this morning with some yoghurt and some homemade granola). I'll give you the other recipes at a later date, but we'll start with the apple tart. As my Mum always says, eat dessert first. So that's what we'll do.
The apple tart wasn't hard to make, it was just time consuming: making the pastry, peeling/coring/slicing all the apples, making the apple sauce. But I think it's worth it, especially for a special occasion. It makes you feel very domestic-goddess, being able to produce something like this from your very own kitchen.
French Apple Tart:
From Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
Makes one 25-26cm tart.
For the Pastry:
2 cups pastry flour ("00" flour)
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp white sugar
200g cold butter, chopped into bits
1/2 cup iced water
Mix flour, salt, sugar and butter in a big bowl. Rub the flour and butter together with the tips of your fingers until the mix resembles crumbs. Don't over mix, you don't want the butter to get too warm.
Add the water and quickly mix in with one hand. Add a few more drops of water if the mix hasn't come together. The dough should hold together without being sticky.
Turn the dough out onto a floured board. With the heel, not the palm, of your hand, knead the dough to blend it together. Sprinkle it lightly with flour and wrap in baking paper and place in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight before using.
When ready to use, place the dough on a floured board. Roll out into a thin circle bigger than your baking tin. Lift the dough off the board and lay over your greased tin. Press the dough into the tin and prick all around with a fork. Cover with a square of baking paper and then pour in rice, dried beans or baking weights. Blind bake in a 200C preheated oven for 8-10 minutes until base is set. Remove the paper and weights and bake for another 3-5 minutes until pastry starts to colour.
For the Apple topping:
2 kg apples (I used golden delicious and fuji's)
1/3 cup apricot jam
2/3 cup white sugar
3 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 lemon
Peel, core and quarter the apples (You might like to have a sit on the couch whilst you're doing this). Cut enough of the apples into thin lengthwise slices to make 3 cups. Toss them with 1 tsp lemon juice and 2 tbsp sugar. (for the top of the tart).
Cut the remaining apples into chunks, about 8 cups, and place in a pan with 3 tbsp water. Cook, covered, over a low heat for 20 mins, stirring occasionally. The apples should be tender.
Mix in the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil and cook until the apples have turned into a thick sauce.
Preheat oven to 190C.
Spread the applesauce on the blind baked pastry shell. Arrange the apple slices on top of the sauce.
Bake for 30 mins, or until apples have browned and are tender.
Spread an apricot glaze (1/2 cup apricot jam mixed with 2 tbsp sugar heated until just simmering) over the top of the apples.
I originally made these so that Brent would have something quick to eat on his way to work. Unfortunately, they tasted so good that I ended up eating them all myself. They're sort of wholesome and breakfasty, but not so much so that you don't feel like you're getting a treat. Like when you're a little kid and you get to have cocopops for breakfast and it's a big deal. You almost feel naughty for eating them for breakfast, until you remember that it's all wholegrain flour, oats and yoghurt. Did I mention that I like oats?
I used two recipes when I was making these, from Everybody Likes Sandwiches and Smitten Kitchen. The reason I used two was because one didn't have eggs in them, and I didn't have any eggs, and the other didn't have enough sugar in it, but the other did... you get the picture. I halved the recipe, but feel free to double it back up again.
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup wholewheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cold butter, cut into chunks
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp plain thick yoghurt
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tbsp cornflour
2 1/2 cups raspberries (frozen is good)
Mix the oats, flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar.
Add the butter, and mix in with your hands, until mix is slightly sandy and the butter is mixed in.
Add the yoghurt and mix.
Press roughly 3/4 of this mix into a lined baking tray (I used a 9" by 9" dish).
In a separate bowl, mix the raspberries with the cornflour and another tbsp sugar.
Tip the raspberries over the oat base, making sure they cover the base.
Crumble the remaining dough over the raspberries to make a sort of 'crumble'.
Bake 45 mins or until golden.
Cool the bars before cutting.
There are lots of things that are better than the federal election. Orange cake is just one of them. Do yourself a favour and make an orange cake on Saturday, to cheer yourself up.
We served this cake straight out of the oven, covered in syrup and thick, plain yoghurt. It was like a proper afternoon tea, where everyone drops in at just the right moment to sit around talking about their how day was, while they enjoy some cake and tea.
The orange syrup bubbled away nicely while the cake cooked and the sun shone into my parents kitchen through the big windows that overlook the ocean.
This cake is moist and textural and the syrupy oranges on top make it look lovely. If I do say so myself.
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup castor sugar
zest of 1 orange
2 eggs
1 cup semolina
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup almond meal
Orange Syrup:
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 orange, sliced
2 tsp orange blossom water
Cream butter, sugar and orange zest.
Add eggs, beating between each.
Fold in semolina, almond meal and baking powder.
Pour into bundt tin and bake for 30 mins. For the Syrup:
Put juice, sugar and oranges in saucepan over medium heat. Simmer, then pour over cake.
Ah, winter. Orange season. Look at those blood oranges! They are lovely.
I only recently got into marmalade. Now I eat it pretty much everyday. Dad and I were talking about making marmalade a little while ago, and one day he called me up.
"What are you doing this weekend?" he says.
"I don't know, Dad. Why's that?"
"It's seville orange season!"
So we made marmalade.
The great thing about blood oranges is that you get an amazing red colour scheme, along with the tangy orange flavour. Not that plain old orange isn't a nice colour. I didn't say that.
The thing I enjoyed most about making the marmalade (apart from spending some quality time with old Dad, of course) was slicing the oranges up as thinly as I could. It was like a competition with myself to see how thin I could get them. I won.
Dad says you need to use a big, wide pot for this, rather than a big, high pot, as the heat distributes better. Dad also says that the sugar makes the fruit break down faster. So if you like your marmalade a bit less peely, put the sugar in earlier.
Blood Orange Marmalade:
The same weight of oranges as sugar.
We used 1kg oranges : 1kg sugar
We also used a few seville oranges, along with the blood oranges.
Make sure you wash your jars and lids thoroughly in soapy water, and, when dry, steralise them (just pop them in the microwave for 5 mins).
Cut the oranges in half lengthways.
Cut the pithy bit out of the middle and slice the ends off. Put these, and any pips, in a muslin bag for later.
Slice the oranges as thinly as you can and put in a big, wide pot.
Tie up the muslin bag with all the orange bits and add this to the pot.
Pour in enough cold water to just cover the oranges.
Cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the oranges are starting to break down.
Take out the muslin bag.
Add the sugar and stir.
Cook until the marmalade is at setting stage.
Pour into your steralised jars.
Leave the lids off the jars until a dry skin starts to form on the top, then put the lids on. If you put the lids on too soon, the tops will go mouldy. Gross.
Serve on toast with heaps of butter and lots of tea.
Also, check out this girls outfit! I hope you wear something like that when you make your marmalade.
