| The recipe I found was for kumquat marmalade, not preserves. It called for:
2 c. kumquats, finely sliced
1 1/2 c. orange flesh, chopped
1 1/2 c. orange peel, chopped
1/3 c. lemon juice
1.5 quarts water
Sugar
I had enough kumquats to multiply the entire recipe by 2. To start, mix everything except for the sugar together in a pot and simmer for 5 minutes. Then refrigerate for 12-18 hours. For me, this meant overnight. Even though the recipe called for thinly slicing the kumquats, I cut them just in half, like the kumquat preserves that I hoped to imitate. Later (the next day), I tried cutting some of these down in a food processor but I got sick of burning my hand while trying to keep the food processor from shooting hot, sticky liquid all over the kitchen (which it kind of did anyway) so I gave up after a little bit.
The next day I got started early. The recipe says to measure the amount of fruit AND liquid you have and add 1 c. sugar per cup fruit mixture. As you can imagine, this equates to a nauseating amount of sugar. For me it was 14 c. sugar. I decided to use 10 c. instead of 14 and it was still too much in the end. Too much by a lot, actually. But I didn't know that until later.
Put your fruit mixture (with sugar added) back on the stove on high heat and boil until the sugar dissolves and the liquid forms a sticky syrup. The thing is, the liquid looks very thin when heated to a boil but as soon as it cools it becomes thick. I boiled mine for a long, long time waiting for it to thicken up and it never really did. I guess that's another lesson learned.
Beginning to cook the fruit with the sugar
Hours later, when the pot seemed like it was entirely full of liquid with very little fruit.
As you cook, the amount of fruit in the pot seems to get smaller and smaller and it seems as though the pot is mostly full of liquid. After far too much boiling, I went ahead and put my mixture into jars. For half of the mixture, I added 2 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ground cloves. For the other half, I added no spices.
My boyfriend's daughter helped me - that's her arm in the picture
Then we put all of the jars in the canner. I did this in two batches - first the spiced stuff and then the rest of it. This was only because I ran out of jar lids and sugar and had to go buy more in the middle of canning. Batch #1 yielded 8 cups marmalade and batch #2 (in the picture below) yielded 6 cups. The recipe calls for using half-pint jars with 1/4" headspace and processing them in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.
Jars in the canner
The long wait - 10 minutes
In addition to our 14 cups of marmalade that we canned, we also had a little bit extra left over. Here's a picture of our beautiful handiwork:
The thing is, it's so thick and sticky once it cools, it's hard to spread it on bread. The orange peels and kumquats don't spread at all, actually, and it's so sweet that you have big, overly sweet lumps of marmalade on your toast or sandwich. I guess I've learned what not to do for next time. |
