Making marmalade

The Seville orange season is upon us which means its time to make the very popular and tasty homemade marmalade to serve with our scrummy breakfasts.  The recipe is simple, the hardest part is actually cutting up the orange peel which is quite labour intensive but the resulting taste is well worth it.  This time, instead of just making plain orange marmalade I am also going to make a batch of ginger and whiskey marmalade, will let you know how I get on.

Recipe for Seville Orange Marmalade or Three Fruit Maramalade makes about 12 x 450 g
jars This traditional marmalade can only be made in season- usually
January to early February.

Wash and cut in half :
1.4 kg (3lb) Seville oranges (or 1 grapefruit and 3 large oranges)
2 large lemons
Cover a plate or small bowl with a piece of muslin. Squeeze out the juice
then strain the pips and any membrane or pulp you can remove from the skin
in your muslin. Tie up the pips and pulp and put in your pot.
Using a sharp knife slice the peel thinly and add to the fruit juices
3.4 litres (6 pints) water
Bring to the boil then simmer gently for about two hours. The peel should
be soft enough to disintegrate if you rub it between your fingers and the
liquid reduced by about half.
Remove the muslin bag and put it to one side to cool. When it is cool
enough to handle, squeeze the bag well to extract as much of the gluey
pectin as possible. Stir it into the orange liquid along with
2.7 kg (6 lb) sugar
Bring up to heat slowly, stirring occasionally until the sugar has
completely dissolved.
Put a small saucer into the freezer.
Then turn the heat up to the highest setting and boil rapidly for about 15
minutes.
Check for a set: drop a small amount on a frozen saucer. After 1 minute,
push it with your fingertip. If a skin forms and crinkles when you push
it, it is set. If it is not set, boil for another 5 minutes and check
again.
(add 5tbsp whiskey per 1.5kg fruit at this point
Leave to stand for half an hour then pot in sterilised jars and cover in the usual way.
Leave a comment for any questions or just to let me know how you got on making the marmalade.