It's that time of year in my neck of the woods again when my orange trees are so laden with ripe fruit that they practically throw them at me every time I walk into my backyard, as if they are trying to tell me, "Hurry- get these things off of us! We can't hold onto them much longer!" lol
If I haven't been very active around here too much lately, it's because I've been mucho busy scrambling to find ways of preserving my bountiful windfall. I only have 2 trees, but it's almost insane how much fruit they produced this year! All I can say is be careful what you say to your trees...they're listening! (Yes- I'm one of those crazy ladies that talks to her plants.
I'm always speaking good things over them whenever I get near them).
So.... anyway, I've been busy juicing, making orange simple syrup to use as a base for frozen treats, making freezer marmalade, grating up lots of zest to candy and to freeze, not to mention making orange cupcakes and orange cream pie and creamy orange shave ice, etc...
Anyway, freezer marmalade is a new thing to me. Normally, I cook up my recipe and then can it in a water bath, but this year I wanted to do the freezer method which doesn't require any cooking of the fruit or water-bath canning at all.
I couldn't find much on the interwebs for making fresh, freezer orange jam or marmalade, so I pretty much winged it with some instant pectin (Ball brand). And it worked!
Anyway, if any of y'all are in the same boat as me with lots of oranges you don't know what to do with, here is my recipe for freezer orange marmalade/orange jam. Actually, I've taken to calling it my orange jamalade. lol :
Makes 1 pint.
-1 2/3 cups of chopped orange pulp and juices, minus the skin, seeds, pith and membranes (it normally takes a mix of about 6 small to medium oranges for me or 2 to 3 very large oranges, to get 1 2/3 cup worth)
-166g castor sugar (i.e., superfine sugar)- roughly 3/4 cup - 1 cup worth
-1 tbsp. bottled or fresh lemon juice (I like the using the Organic Santa Cruz brand because it doesn't contain any additives)
-2 tbsp. candied orange zest (I use a microplane to zest the oranges I'll be using to make the jamalade, and then I cover the zest with water in a small pot and boil it 10 minutes, then I change the water and repeat 2 more times before lastly adding an equal amount of water and sugar to the drained zest and boiling it one more time. Then I let it completely cool before using in my jamalade (freeze any left-overs). This helps to lessen the bitterness of the zest. Y'all may like your marmalade bitter or with bigger chunks of peel, and that's okay- you can do this part differently, but I'm a sissy. I like mine sweet with paper-thin little slivers of zest to give just a hint of a zing here and there when eating it, and that's about as much as I can take).
-16g to 20g Ball brand RealFruit Instant Pectin for freezer jam with no cooking (roughly 2 tbsp. to 2 tbsp. +1 tsp). You might need to play with the pectin amount here. Oh- and also- don't believe the package when it says your jam will be ready in 30 minutes. Jams made from other fruits might be ready in as little as 30 minutes, but I found that my orange jamalade can take up to 3 days to finally set up (in the fridge). Once it's set up, I package it in either a quart-size FoodSaver bag or a quart-size Freezer Zip Loc laid flat on its side with all the air sucked out, so that it will take up as little room in my freezer as possible.
In one bowl, mix the chopped orange pulp and juices, the lemon juice and the candied zest.
In a separate bowl whisk the castor sugar and the pectin together until well-combined (this will eliminate any lumping in the finished jam).
Pour the orange mixture into the sugar/pectin mixture and whisk for 3 minutes.
What I've been doing after this is letting it stand covered at room temp for 30 minutes and then refrigerating until set up to my satisfaction, which can take as long as 3 days. If it's still not set up well enough by then, I have been adding in a tsp. more pectin (mixed in a little sugar) to it, which has been doing the trick for me in those cases.
The cool thing is that I can open the bag of frozen jamalade and scoop out as much or as little as I want at a time, and then reseal the bag and pop it back into the freezer.
Enjoy!
IrishLass
If I haven't been very active around here too much lately, it's because I've been mucho busy scrambling to find ways of preserving my bountiful windfall. I only have 2 trees, but it's almost insane how much fruit they produced this year! All I can say is be careful what you say to your trees...they're listening! (Yes- I'm one of those crazy ladies that talks to her plants.
I'm always speaking good things over them whenever I get near them).So.... anyway, I've been busy juicing, making orange simple syrup to use as a base for frozen treats, making freezer marmalade, grating up lots of zest to candy and to freeze, not to mention making orange cupcakes and orange cream pie and creamy orange shave ice, etc...
Anyway, freezer marmalade is a new thing to me. Normally, I cook up my recipe and then can it in a water bath, but this year I wanted to do the freezer method which doesn't require any cooking of the fruit or water-bath canning at all.
I couldn't find much on the interwebs for making fresh, freezer orange jam or marmalade, so I pretty much winged it with some instant pectin (Ball brand). And it worked!
Anyway, if any of y'all are in the same boat as me with lots of oranges you don't know what to do with, here is my recipe for freezer orange marmalade/orange jam. Actually, I've taken to calling it my orange jamalade. lol :
Makes 1 pint.
-1 2/3 cups of chopped orange pulp and juices, minus the skin, seeds, pith and membranes (it normally takes a mix of about 6 small to medium oranges for me or 2 to 3 very large oranges, to get 1 2/3 cup worth)
-166g castor sugar (i.e., superfine sugar)- roughly 3/4 cup - 1 cup worth
-1 tbsp. bottled or fresh lemon juice (I like the using the Organic Santa Cruz brand because it doesn't contain any additives)
-2 tbsp. candied orange zest (I use a microplane to zest the oranges I'll be using to make the jamalade, and then I cover the zest with water in a small pot and boil it 10 minutes, then I change the water and repeat 2 more times before lastly adding an equal amount of water and sugar to the drained zest and boiling it one more time. Then I let it completely cool before using in my jamalade (freeze any left-overs). This helps to lessen the bitterness of the zest. Y'all may like your marmalade bitter or with bigger chunks of peel, and that's okay- you can do this part differently, but I'm a sissy. I like mine sweet with paper-thin little slivers of zest to give just a hint of a zing here and there when eating it, and that's about as much as I can take).
-16g to 20g Ball brand RealFruit Instant Pectin for freezer jam with no cooking (roughly 2 tbsp. to 2 tbsp. +1 tsp). You might need to play with the pectin amount here. Oh- and also- don't believe the package when it says your jam will be ready in 30 minutes. Jams made from other fruits might be ready in as little as 30 minutes, but I found that my orange jamalade can take up to 3 days to finally set up (in the fridge). Once it's set up, I package it in either a quart-size FoodSaver bag or a quart-size Freezer Zip Loc laid flat on its side with all the air sucked out, so that it will take up as little room in my freezer as possible.
In one bowl, mix the chopped orange pulp and juices, the lemon juice and the candied zest.
In a separate bowl whisk the castor sugar and the pectin together until well-combined (this will eliminate any lumping in the finished jam).
Pour the orange mixture into the sugar/pectin mixture and whisk for 3 minutes.
What I've been doing after this is letting it stand covered at room temp for 30 minutes and then refrigerating until set up to my satisfaction, which can take as long as 3 days. If it's still not set up well enough by then, I have been adding in a tsp. more pectin (mixed in a little sugar) to it, which has been doing the trick for me in those cases.
The cool thing is that I can open the bag of frozen jamalade and scoop out as much or as little as I want at a time, and then reseal the bag and pop it back into the freezer.
Enjoy!
IrishLass
