Marmalade Sunday

Last Sunday was Marmalade Sunday. Due to the short Seville orange season, this day tends to fall near 'Black Monday', statistically the most depressing day of the year. Marmalade Sunday offers a ray of tangy orange sunshine on your toast, come Black Monday morning. Making it more of a murky brown Monday.
This Marmalade Sunday should, by all Rayburn intents and purposes, have started on the Saturday. The Rayburn enables you to do the long slow cooking of the oranges overnight on the oven's idling setting. Making it more economical and less labour intensive. I however, only had the urge for making marmalade the following day, and couldn't wait another 12 hours.

I used the recipe from the Waitrose 'Winter Harvest 2013' booklet. A booklet I seem to have devoured since new year. (The Chocolate Orange Brownies are themselves a cure for winter SAD, but probably break every new year's resolution you've set.) 
This recipe has you squeeze the juice of 1kg oranges and 1 lemon into 2 litres of cold water, and put all the messy bits, i.e. the pith and pips of the oranges, in a muslin bag. This hangs in the liquid for the 2 hours while it simmers. 

The remaining skins are sliced separately and added directly to the liquid at the same time.

The muslin bag is removed after the simmering stage, and 2kg of preserving sugar is added. Turn the heat up as high as possible and boil for around half an hour. (This needs to be done 30 mins before the end of the simmering stage with a Rayburn.) The recipe says 15 mins, but no way. I kept a saucer in the fridge at this stage, and got it out to test the liquid for set-ness. Drop a small amount of liquid onto the chilled saucer and wait a few seconds. Push the liquid, and if it wrinkles, it's set. Start testing after 15 mins to get your eye in, and you get to taste the unset bits before time. 
This recipe enabled me, for the first time, to turn the Rayburn up to its highest setting. The gas mark equivalent of 10. The amplifier equivalent of 11. I wasn't sure if the whole thing would take off. But, it gave the most even rolling boil I've ever seen. And always keen to find a reason to extol the virtues of the Rayburn, this was definitely a time for smug pleasure.

This time I did sterilise the jam jars. I washed them in hot soapy water and left them in the bottom oven of the Rayburn for the full marmalade preparation and making time. Probably 3 hours. They didn't need to be there that long, but they did all give a satisfying 'pop' when the lids contracted as they cooled after filling.

This quantity made 12 jars, but I did use quite a few smallish jars (better if you want to give some and keep some!) My next plan is a marmalade cake. I think this may be the new rhubarb!