oranges

Orange & ginger marmalade

11 Comments / oranges, preserves, The Ordinary Cook /

In the depths of January we all need a sliver of brightness. Marmalade delivers that. It brightens up my morning toast every day.

Every year I look forward to the seville oranges arriving in the shops. I buy two kilos. One kilo to make marmalade straight away and one kilo to put in the freezer to make more in the summer. No one should be without a jar of marmalade in the cupboard.

Frozen oranges can be used straight from frozen using the method below.

My Aga Marmalade is my go to recipe, this just has the added zing of ginger. Feel free to omit it if ginger is not your thing.

1 kg seville oranges
1 lemon, sliced in half
10cm piece of root ginger
2kg granulated sugar
1 litre water
200g stem ginger in syrup

Method
This makes 8-10 jars of marmalade. Sterilise the jars by washing them well and then pop into a low oven (100C) for about 15 minutes.

Place the oranges, lemon and piece of root ginger in a pan. Add the water. The water should just cover the oranges if it doesn’t try using a smaller pan. I then place a smaller saucepan lid that fits inside the pan on top of the oranges to keep them submerged. Bring this to the boil and then lower the temperature to simmer the oranges until they are soft. This can take a couple of hours. If you are using an Aga you can then place the pan in the simmering oven.

Once the oranges are soft leave them to cool in the water. Once cool take the oranges out of the water and cut them in half. Scrape all of the pulp back into the cooking liquid including the pulp from the lemon. The lemon and piece of root ginger can both be discarded. Place the pulpy liquid back onto a medium heat and bring to the boil. Boil for 6 minutes. Strain the liquid through a sieve, pushing through as much pulp as you can. It is this pulp that will help the marmalade to set and give the marmalade plenty of flavour.

Cut the orange peel as thick or thin as you prefer. Pop a saucer in the freezer so that you can test the marmalade for wrinkles. Cut the stem ginger into small pieces (depending on how small or large you will want to eat it).

Put the sugar in with the water and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has fully dissolved. Add the peel and stir well. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly, it should be rolling like lava from a volcano for 15 minutes. Take the cold saucer and place a spoonful of the marmalade on to it. Add the stem ginger. Leave to cool and then push your finger through to test for set. It should just wrinkle slightly. If it doesn’t boil it until it does. Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes before pouring into the sterile jars and sealing.

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Candied peel scones

7 Comments / oranges, scones, The Ordinary Cook /
candied peel scone

It felt like a scone morning this morning. I have made some marmalade and so felt the urge to make scones that would go well with marmalade. I have some candied peel in a kilner jar on the side and so was born a lovely scone.

scones with marmalade

You don’t have to make your own candied peel to make these but I urge you to give it a try. It’s very easy, lasts for ages and is much more delicious than any you can buy. Try the link above for my recipe for candied peel.

Makes 6-8 scones

300g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
20g caster sugar
50g butter, cut into dice
20g candied peel, cut into small pieces
1 egg
100ml plain yoghurt
50ml milk

Egg wash, made with 1 egg and a dessertspoon of milk whisked together
caster sugar for sprinkling on top

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°c, gas mark 7 or use the floor of the roasting oven of the Aga for ten minutes and then move to the top of the roasting oven for the last two minutes to brown.

I make my scones in a food processor, which makes it easy and quick. Place the flour, baking powder and sugar in the bowl of the processor. Add the butter and pulse until it looks like breadcrumbs. Mix the yoghurt, milk and egg together in a jug and pour into the flour. Add the candied peel. Pulse until it just begins to come together. Tip out onto a surface and bring together into a disc.

If you don’t have a processor then place the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Add the cubes of butter and rub in using your fingertips. Add the yoghurt, milk and egg (that you have lightly whisked together) and the candied peel and bring together with your hands. This will only take a few seconds.

I then tend to pat the mixture into a round with my hands, but you can use a light touch with a rolling pin, to about 2.5cm thick. Stamp out scones using a biscuit cutter. Do not rotate the cutter, just stamp down and lift out. If you rotate you prevent them rising properly. Re-roll the trimmings and stamp out until you have no mixture left. Place onto a floured baking tray, brush with egg wash just on the top and sprinkle over a layer of sugar. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until golden and crusty on top. Leave for about 2 minutes and then eat. These are best eaten straight out of the oven.

 

 

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Chocolate Marmalade Cake

13 Comments / cake, chocolate, oranges /
This is my submission for this month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge.  This month it is Chele’s turn again to host the challenge and she came up with the idea of using leftovers or surplus stock.  This is a great idea post-Christmas, but unfortunately because we are so greedy in this household we had no leftovers to speak of. I have been racking my brain for a solution and of course, when I glanced again at the 10 jars (well 9 now, I did mention that we are greedy) of marmalade that are sitting on a tray on top of the hob waiting for me to decide where to keep them, inspiration struck.

One of my favourite cookbooks on my shelf is The Dairy Book of Family Cookery, not necessarily for the recipes, although I have cooked from it many a time, but because of the nostalgia it has for me.  It was written in 1983 and my mum bought it from the milkman.  It was a book I grew up with and used a lot when I was a teenager.  I remembered this morning that I cooked a Marmalade cake with a crunchy cornflake topping when I was about fourteen (only a few years ago!).  I thought I would give it a go again, but this time add chunks of chocolate into the mix.  I had come to the end of the packet of cornflakes so I used half cornflakes and half rice crispies (surely this counts as using up leftovers/surplus stock too).

Well, it hasn’t worked out perfectly but the end result does taste good.  I set to work following the instructions to beat together softened butter and syrup, but this turned out into a lumpy mess that no matter how much mixing I gave it did not get any better.  I think my problem may have been that it is cold today and my food cupboard is on the cold side and when I add the cold syrup to the butter it just made the butter hard again.  So this mix was disposed of into the scrap bowl for our chickens and a fresh batch started.  This time I dispensed with the syrup and used half muscovado sugar and half caster sugar.  It worked better than the syrup.  The cake sunk in the middle though, which may be due to the topping being too heavy  or it may be due to something else entirely. Also, because I was in a bit of a rush I thought I would be a Smart Alec and dispense with the all important lining the base of the cake tin with baking parchment.  Silly me, this bad move resulted in the cake breaking up when attempting to get it out the tin.  Oh well, you live and learn.  The cake looks like this, but tastes very much better than it looks.

I like the contrast between fluffy cake and crunchy topping very much.

175g (6oz) softened butter
50g (2oz) muscovado sugar
50g (2oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
5 tbsp marmalade
350g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
100g (4oz) good quality chocolate
100ml (4 fl oz) milk

For the topping:

50g (2oz) cornflakes (or rice crispies)
2 tbsp syrup
5 tbsp marmalade

Method

Beat the butter and the sugars together until fluffy and then add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the marmalade and mix well.  Sift over the flour, baking powder and spices and fold into the mix, add the chocolate and the milk and mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix the ingredients for the topping together.

Spoon into a 20cm cake tine that has  been greased and lined.  Spoon the topping evenly over the levelled cake.  Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or in the Baking Oven of the Aga for 45 minutes – 1 hour until a cake tester or skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes and then turn onto a wire tray to cool completely.

 

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Aga Marmalade

40 Comments / breakfast, oranges, preserves, The Ordinary Cook /
I adore marmalade.  I really enjoy the bitterness of the orange peel in contrast with the sweet jam.  In fact, I just had to get up to make some toast so that I could have some marmalade because writing about it made my mouth water.  Well, between you and me, I made two pieces and spread the other one with lemon curd. I think it is a well established fact that I am greedy, and now there are crumbs on the laptop.

This is the time of year for making marmalade as it needs to be made from Seville oranges and these are only available from markets in January and early February. The Seville orange is incredibly bitter and not at all one that you want to eat freshly peeled. But when mixed with a ton of sugar they make one of the best things that can be spread on toast. The lady who runs my local market tells me every year of the tale of the woman who was naughtily mixing her bag of oranges between the normal and the Seville.  The Seville is usually a bit dearer and this lady thought she was going to get herself a good deal. The market owner thought it appropriate that she let her get on with it and have fun at home playing orange roulette.

Seville oranges freeze very well, so buy them when you see them and put them in the freezer for making marmalade throughout the year.  In fact, I used frozen for this recipe as I mentioned to my mum that I was off to get some Sevilles and she still had some in her freezer from last year so I used those up. Use them from frozen.

I used Mary Berry’s recipe from The Aga Book. In this recipe she recommends that you simmer fresh fruit for 2 hours and frozen fruit overnight.  This makes me feel better as I missed that instruction and was planning to simmer them for two hours but fell asleep watching telly and went straight to bed having forgotten all about my oranges. You see, things always work out in the end.

This recipe made loads, about 10 jars, so unless you have friends and family who are marmalade fiends too you may want to halve the recipe. You will find another marmalade recipe of mine here.

1½kg (3lb) Seville oranges
Juice of 2 lemons
3 kg (6lb) sugar
2 litres (4 pints) water

Method

Put the whole oranges in the Aga preserving pan and squeeze in the lemon juice. Cover with the water and bring to the boil.  Once boiling, place the pan carefully in the simmering oven and leave to simmer until the oranges are tender (2 hours or so for fresh fruit, overnight for frozen). Remove the oranges and leave to cool. Once cool enough to handle cut them in half and scoop out all the pulp and pips and place these back into the water.  Bring to the boil and boil for 6 minutes.  Strain this liquid into a large bowl through a sieve and, using a spoon, force the pulp through the sieve.  It is this pulp which contains the pectin that will set the marmalade. Pour the liquid back into the preserving pan.

Cut the peel of the oranges as thinly or as thickly as you like your shreds to be and add these to the liquid, along with the sugar.  Bring the whole lot up to a rolling boil and boil until setting point is reached.  You can test for this with a sugar thermometer (105°c) or have a cold saucer ready and when a little is allowed to cool on this saucer it should wrinkle when pushed with your finger.

Allow the marmalade to cool a little (this will help with the distribution of peel through the jar rather than it all sitting at the top) and then pour into sterilised jars.

To sterilise your jars, wash in warm soapy water and rinse with hot water, then place on a baking tray in the simmering oven for twenty minutes.

May 2014: I have been requested to link to Aga Living as this is a recipe from Mary Berry’s Aga Book.

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Clementines in sugar syrup

5 Comments / oranges, pudding /

I made this clementine salad for pudding on my Mum’s birthday and served it with the Victoria Sandwich, which was a very good combination – it was reminiscent of trifle.  It is equally good served on its own or with a splash of cream.  If you want to jazz it up further a splash of orange liqueur in the sugar syrup would be very good indeed.

It is very easy to make and studded with the pomegranate seeds it is jewel-like in appearance.

5 clementines
½ pomegranate
100g caster sugar
50ml water

Method

Using a sharp knife cut the peel and pith off four of the clementines and then slice the segments out of the skin so you have just the flesh and none of the skin.  If you can do this over the serving bowl that will mean that any escaping juice will be caught.  Place the clementine flesh in a glass serving bowl.  Squeeze the juice out of the remaining clementine and pour over the clementine flesh. Hold the half of the pomegranate over the serving bowl and using a spoon bash the skin of the pomegranate so that the seeds scatter into the bowl.

Place the sugar in a small saucepan and pour over the water.  Place over a gentle heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.  Turn the heat up slightly and let the syrup boil for about two minutes until it develops a golden colour. Pour the sugar syrup over the clementines (if you wanted to add a splash of orange liqueur this would be the time to do it) and then chill for a few hours before serving.

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